************************************************************************
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.
************************************************************************

Part II -- the middle: Prometheus Unbound
by Phil Spickler
4 Oct 00

Well, dear readers (both of you) --
       As you may remember in Part 1 of this series, I made claim to the
notion that $cience was the religion of the 20th century, and went on to
accuse this religion of many of the worst things that could be said about
other religions: their bloody effect upon the peoples of Earth, and their
enormous power to divide and conquer, as well as eating up all the territory.

         Back some time ago, a chap named Prometheus, as the story goes,
against the will of others, brought fire to the planet Earth and gave it to
its peoples.  He (Prometheus) was punished severely by having to watch the
current Olympics on American television every day (just kidding).  He was
actually bound to a rock somewhere and had to suffer the pain and humiliation
of having some bird or birds come every day and peck out his liver.  And the
way this was set up, he got a new liver each day, only to have it pecked out
again in great suffering and agony.

        He had, after all, violated the universe-wide standing order for any
and all space travelers, namely, the universal dictum which is "Thou shalt
not, in arriving on another planet, add technology or technological
understandings or science, if you will, that will in any way alter the
existing civilizations that may be found on said planet."  This is a very
"old" law, and in fact was not truly invented on the wonderful TV show "Star
Trek," where it was perhaps recalled and re-expressed.

        Using Prometheus just for the moment as a starting point for the
notion of injecting powerful possibilities into cultures where they've never
existed, which then have far-reaching effects in upsetting existing balances
of power and setting into motion violent and bloody conflicts, I should like
to point out that this has been one of the major crimes that some people of
$cience stand guilty of.

        Prometheus, by the way, when he was being tried by a jury of gods for
the crime of bringing fire to Earth, fathered the original justifier, the
basic-basic excuse in an effort to evade the responsibility for what he had
done.  This excuse can be worded in a number of ways, but always amounts to
something like the following: "It's not my fault; don't blame ME; it's the
fault of the people and the way they used this wonderful invention."  In
Prometheus's case, of course, it was fire; more recently the happy scientists
of our planet got together and gave the pre-homo sapiens governments of our
planet atomic bombs and hydrogen bombs, and with few exceptions were heard to
say, "It won't be OUR fault if these little playthings are used badly."

        Our world is rife, historically, with persons of genius who have made
almost unbelievable scientific discoveries and then with unimaginably low
levels of responsibility for some of the worst possibilities inherent in
these discoveries handed them over to the peoples of Earth in exchange for
recognition, adulation, and more lately big bucks, and then lived to see
these discoveries put to extremely harmful use, not by any means limited to
man harming man, but have led to the decimation of large segments of the
flora and fauna of this planet.  But the scientists who make these
discoveries, and the other almost-scientists that then carry out their most
destructive possibilities, all fall on the Responsibility
Scale at the level of corporate mentality, which is to say, "Treat us like
human beings or people, and give us the rights of people, but without any of
the responsibilities that we expect of sane or normal people."

        Yes, I recently even heard on the IVy list a couple of people who
never even knew where they got the idea parroting the notion that "You can't
blame scientists or Science for the uses that humans put their discoveries
to."  Well, in Prometheus's case, that didn't work; and karmically speaking,
those who seek to lessen their overts and blind themselves to responsibility
as cause are certainly enjoying, in terms of case state, lifetimes that
reflect the motivator flow.
  Those who wish to avoid taking responsibility for overts of this magnitude
often say something to the effect that "It's not OUR fault that folks decided
to use our wonderful idea or invention in such a destructive way."  That kind
of statement is on a par with "We let the children have a loaded 9mm handgun,
but you can't blame us if they decided to use it to kill one another."

        Working backwards on this one, and discarding right from the beginning
the notion that scientific discoveries and their offerings to human beings in
the form of governments is inevitable, we can start with the H bomb, and then
prior to the H bomb the atomic bomb.  These two amazing gifts in the 20th
century that were given to the peoples of Earth and their governments were
authored by persons of genius in a number of the natural sciences who in fact
or fancy resemble Prometheus bringing fire to Earth.  These notables, who
possess such vast and unusual intelligence, might well be compared to the
science fiction notion of people from very advanced civilizations dropping in
on Earth, or people from the future time-travelling, and their impact on
Earth can be measured in gigatons.

       And so we'll close this part, having uncovered and taken a look at the
postulate of irresponsibility  that in its timeless character is much in
evidence on present-time Earth.  For any entrenched group, religious or
scientifically religious, that has been entrenched for a long time and
literally gotten away with murder, to suddenly stop its battleship and turn
it around going the other way toward a sense of individual and group
responsibility and ethic, is not done overnight.  But the first step is to
awaken from the long automated sleep in the area and allow the light of day
to seep into these dark caverns.  It's the same procedure that you do when
you're auditing what I would laughingly refer to as an individual, but the
nifty thing is, it can be done, and of course the starting place is one
person; and what we're heading for is what the person was before they became
a scientist.

        Thanks for listening -- I can see that this may be more than a
three-part series, 'cause I'm just getting warmed up.  In the next article I
hope to entertain and amuse you by telling you about various conversations
I've had with different scientists regarding the source of the Big Bang,
which as you know is the name of a theory regarding our apparently expanding
universe.

       'Til then,
       Phil