Illusion and Disillusion

Joannes Richter

Illusion and

Disillusion

-2010-

© 2010 by Joannes Richter Published at Lulu www.lulu.com All Rights Reserved ISBN: xxx-x-xxxx-xxx-x

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Contents 1 2 3 4 5

Thank Heavens for Disillusions?...........................................4 The Survival of the Fittest......................................................6 Language................................................................................9 History..................................................................................11 The disillusion of worshipping............................................12 The Bible.......................................................................14 A need for Religion.......................................................14 6 The Disillusion of Religion..................................................16 The creation of “man” ..................................................16 The name Yahweh.........................................................18 The colour codes Red and Blue.....................................18 Disillusion of religious symbolism...............................21 7 Politics..................................................................................22 The disillusion of Politics..............................................23 8 The disillusioning of Banking Business...............................24 The Lehmann limit........................................................24 The disillusion of saving money...................................25 9 The last medicine.................................................................27 The last Medicine..........................................................27 10 Blind faith in Technology..................................................29 11 Summary............................................................................30

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1 Thank Heavens for Disillusions? Illusion seems to be the vital component in life. As soon as we are born life will welcome us with our first illusion and on the deathbed we have to experience an ultimate delusion in which our dead body catapults our souls into the dark Nirvana beyond an illusive Paradise. “Thank Heavens for the Disillusions...” “Thank Heavens?”, you may ask yourself. “You must be crazy. I experience my most depressive moments in disillusions...” “No, you misunderstand the idea. In fact the disillusions provide us with the main insights, revealing the truth and enjoying our hearts!” Unfortunately it is not the revelation of truth but a perpetual illusion which will permanently enjoy our human hearts. A constant flow of happiness is to be found in the hearts of the most innocent and naïve persons, sleepwalking and roaming the roads of our planet. In contrast the most depressive experiences are being caused by a premature revelation of deception. Constant happiness requires a controlled management of illusion and disillusions. Any premature disillusion may ruin your day. That's why we should start our life by deciding to live in constant and comfortable illusions or to perpetually fight all deceptions by accepting disillusions as a precious gift. Any other strategies will fail and end up in a demoralizing dead end street.

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In modern times deceiving your fellow men seems to be organized in a most professional way. In order to understand the basic principles we will have to describe how delusion works. As soon as you have decided to live a life of illusions it will be made easy to avoid any disillusion by simply stop thinking. That's the easiest way to manage your life. But if you decide to resist and deny a life of illusions you will be forced to permanently fight the illusions working on you. It would not be efficient to unmask all those little illusions you may meet in your daily life. The most important themes including the mayor illusions are to be found in the main areas of our life. These are the strategical parameters that control our life's path.

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2 The Survival of the Fittest Probably Darwin was the first scientist to reveal the strategy in which life overcomes nature's general process of decay. Obviously life is applying a bundle of illusions to manage the survival of the fittest. In order to be effective there is a simple law to be fulfilled: “Illusions must be good enough to avoid an easy disillusion. In case an illusion is disillusioned it will have to be improved.” In evolution the reproduction mechanism will produce a large number of living creatures which may easily be fooled and die in the battle for survival. The selection mechanism will filter out the cleverest experts in deceiving their neighbours. At this point however it must be said that a few fools may be left to survive. They will be tolerated like the cattle to feed the delusive experts. Obviously the system needs some slaves to feed the experts and free them from these boring tasks and let them concentrate on essentials like deception. Now what will happen if you experience an illusion? If you experience the disillusion as a misfortune or a disaster you are advised to take a deep breath and swallow the mishap. You may accept the idea of having been cheated by an expert. Forget it an don't try to take a revenge. This would only demoralize you in a battle against a superior expert. Any other investment in crying over spilled milk will only generate depressive feelings undermining your health. Just forget it and look up to the sun!

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If however you experience the disillusion as a godsend you may consider yourself as an exceptional person. In fact the thesaurus does merely explain the word “disillusion” as a “disenchanting” and sad fiasco, in worst cases culminating in a tragedy. Clearly these oversimplified definitions illustrate the perfectionism of modern illusions. In contrast experiencing a disillusion as a godsend will allow you to transform the anger's energy into an euphoric insight feeling. This sort of experiences however is so seldom it does not even justify a simple line in the English thesaurus. In contrast there may be other civilisations (e.g. Zen-Buddhism) which do refer the word disillusion to insight (in a “satori” as the key-concept for Zen-Buddhism). To manage a disillusion we need four basic tools: curiosity, education, leisure time and the courage of despair. We need curiosity to initiate suspicion. If we unconditionally accept anything we would never be able to suspect something is wrong. Education is required to understand the mechanism of illusions. Whoever fails to invest some time for education already belongs to the happy group of mindless persons who cannot be deluded at all. There are rumours some governments developed strategies to allow their citizens a minor amount of education – just enough to do their jobs, but no more than that. Limited education is cheaper and simply educated citizens are easier to be controlled, but in a global world this approach is quite risky as the simply educated people might easily be overcome by a better educated competitor.

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Considerable leisure time will be needed to process experiences in our minds. You may need as much time as the delusive expert has been investing into successful illusions. The courage of despair is required whenever you have been double-crossed again and again by delusions. To overcome these problems you will have to purify some insight from each and every disillusion that's hitting you.

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3 Language English language provides a number of expressions for delusions and disillusions: •

deception1 – act of deceiving, fact or state of being deceived; which may suggest cheating or tricking.

•

fraud – always implying guilt.

•

double-dealing – which usually suggests bad attitude.

•

trickery - intended to dupe or fool others.

•

disappointment2 - To defeat of expectation or hope.

•

disillusion3 – to remove an illusion for others or for yourself.

We may discern two different feelings in a disillusion. The first step is a mourning phase in which the promised illusion suddenly disappears This is the step we usually experience as a bad feeling, resulting in depressions. The second phase, which may be delayed for some time is the insight phase following the mourning period. The sadness suggested in the linguistic usage of the word disillusion clearly indicates the impact of language. Although the word does contain a positive impulse the negative character prevails. The word disillusion commonly generates an illusion of sadness where I personally prefer gladness.

1:

from Latin Capio = to capture from Latin Ad punctum = to the point 3: from Latin Illudo = to fool (“play”) somebody's mind 2:

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Delusions in verbal expressions belong to the most important instruments for the delusive experts. Of course a great number of verbal illusions and delusions may also be found in the history books and in the Bible. Wilhelm von Humboldt expressed the goal for history4: „History is considered to lead us to the realization of mankind's ideas.” But what is to be realized if a documented history is full of delusions? In this case the represented goal must be an illusion! A number of other disciplines such as philosophy, justice and religion rely on historical documents, which may have been deluded. Therefore we will have to be careful in evaluations. It is this kind of disillusions which have to be overcome in the course of anybody's lifetime. Most of us prefer to stick to the illusions, where it is easier to make a living without any troubles. In our case however we will fight against these illusions and reveal the core of truth as far as we may reach...

4:

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geschichte

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4 History Of course history cannot be considered as a scientific discipline as long as the history books are merely being written by the victorious side. Unilateral history will lead to historical delusions from institutes, which have survived as emperors for millennia. For centuries history has been written and copied by religious leaders, who did not really care for the quality of copying, but rather ensured conformity to the biblical “truth”. This resulted in illusionary and unproven “facts” to be considered as historical records. The quality of these varying historical documents and evolving historical observers may be expressed by the following observations by Golo Mann5: „History will always be characterized by two elements: the events which have taken place and the observers who may have seen and interpret the events from their viewpoints at the given instants of time. In this process new facts and insights may replace the obsolete data at any time, but the observer may also undergo a metamorphose. History is a living creature – staggering in the light of new experiences and investigations.”

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http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geschichte

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5 The disillusion of worshipping According to professor Richard Dawkins6 religions must be considered as delusions. Most of his points are welldocumented illustrations for the barbaric methods of disciplining members by excluding them from society. One of the victims of these excommunications is the philosopher Spinoza7, who scientifically investigated religion more deeply than any other scientist. That's why we should start by analysing his results. Baruch de Spinoza believed God exists only philosophically and that God was abstract and impersonal. He contended that everything that exists in the Universe is one Reality (substance) and there is only one set of rules governing the whole of the reality which surrounds us and of which we are part. Spinoza viewed God and Nature as two names for the same reality, namely the single substance8 that is the basis of the universe and of which all lesser "entities" are actually modes or modifications, that all things are determined by Nature to exist and cause effects, and that the complex chain of cause and effect is only understood in part. His identification of God with nature was more fully explained in his posthumously published Ethics. That humans presume themselves to have free will, he argues, is a result of their awareness of appetites while being unable to understand the reasons why they want and act as they do.

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especially in his book The God Delusion (2006) Baruch de Spinoza 1632-1677 8: meaning "that which stands beneath" rather than "matter" 7:

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Fig. 1: Baruch Spinoza, ca. 1665 Baruch de Spinoza (1632-1677) Portrait, ca. 1665 (Painting at the Herzog-August-Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel, Germany) Source: http://bdsweb.tripod.com/pic/spinoza-1.jpg This image (or other media file) is in the public domain because its copyright has expired. This applies to the United States, Australia, the European Union and those countries with a copyright term of life of the author plus 70 years.

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The consequences of Spinoza's system also envisages a God that does not rule over the universe by providence, but a God which itself is the deterministic system of which everything in nature is a part. Thus, according to this understanding of Spinoza's system, God would be the natural world and have no personality. However, Spinoza also held that everything must necessarily happen the way that it does. Therefore, humans have no free will. They believe, however, that their will is free. In his letter to G. H. Schaller9 he wrote: "Man is conscious of his own desire, but ignorant of the causes whereby that desire has been determined."

The Bible According to Spinoza the biblical scriptures cannot be considered as free of errors or to literally have been inspired by God. In a critical study a number of contradictions between different biblical chapters may be identified. The Bible is not explaining God's nature or His aim for mankind, but teaches us obedience and love for God and for our fellow men. To understand these rules we do not need a special philosophical or theological qualification.

A need for Religion The majority of religious people depends on religious delusion to bear the burden of disillusions in other fields. Too many disillusions will result in insanity as long as they cannot be transformed into insight. 9:

Letter 62

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Only a slowly growing insight may be able to prevent the human mind from going insane. Spinoza's insight will be able to survive as both thesis and its antitheses seem to withstand a refutation. In both cases the need for a church service including sacrifices and prayers may be irrelevant. Following Spinoza's research only a pantheistic Divinity seems to be remaining, which may be respected without too many public celebrations. Although Spinoza convinced me in the disillusion of a personal Deity ruling the world I decided to develop my own disillusion of religion to avoid any hidden delusions in another author's work.

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6 The Disillusion of Religion Early versions of Hebrew religion probably applied a fertility concept in which Yahweh has been married to Ashera10. Together they were thought to form a married couple, which may have been considered as a unity, speaking as a singular person in majestic plural 11. „Let us make man in our image, after our likeness" The duality may also refer to Elohim, a plural name of the Hebrew deity Yahweh.

The creation of “man” “God created man in his own image. In God’s image he created him; male and female he created them”12. The first couple ("Adam") had been connected back to back and was to be separated later. That's how the first human being has been created according to the legend. In later eras Ashera disappeared, which transformed Elohim from a married couple into a male Deity Yahweh. In order to adapt the creation legend to a male deity the Book Genesis needed to be rewritten. The first man needed to be created as an image of a male Deity and Adam's wife Eve had to be created in a second phase to become his servant.

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A history of God: from Abraham to the present, the 4000 year quest for God von Karen Armstrong - 1993 11:

pluralis maiestatis in Latin

12:

as a couple he created them

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What makes this sequence in an ancient legend so important? A male priority in creating man as a divine image has been used for millennia to avoid social equality between men and women. The female half of society was not allowed to vote or to even own their own property. The encyclical Rerum Novarum 13, supplemented by later encyclicals14 (1931), merely has been addressed to the male members of the Catholic Church, ignoring the female half of this religious community. In matrimony women used to be considered as children. By now West-European states largely may have corrected this inequality, but there remains an imbalance inherited from the Bible. On the other hand there is a great number of Hebrew Rabbis, who document an early balanced creation legend for man and woman: • In explaining the various views concerning Eve's creation, the Pharisees taught15 that Adam was created as a man-woman (androgynous), explaining the Biblequote (Gen. i. 27) as "male and female" instead of "man and woman," and that the separation of the sexes arose from the subsequent operation upon Adam's body, as related in the Scripture. • Jeremiah ben Eleazar16, a Palestinian scholar of the 2nd century, inferred that Adam was created with two faces, one of a man and one of a woman, and that God afterwards cleft them asunder. 13:

Translation: Of New Things issued by Pope Leo XIII on May 15, 1891

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in particular Pius XI's Quadragesimo Anno From the Jewish Encyclopedia: Adam Kadmon ( Er. 18a, Gen. R. viii.) 16: Info from the website: Jewish Encyclopedia 15:

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• “God created the human being, being both male and female, which was subsequently divided into two beings”17. • The Zohar is widely considered the most important work of Kabbala or Jewish mysticism and describes the Tetragrammaton's (IHVH) androgynous symbolism in detail. The Zohar first appeared in Spain in the 13th century, and was published by a Jewish writer named Moses de Leon.

The name Yahweh The name Yahweh has been preserved unchanged. In this name the androgynous structure survives in the letter combination IU, which may be identified by interpreting the Matres Lectionis18. The symbolic letters IU may also be identified in Indoeuropean divine names such as Jupiter, Zeus, etc. which correlates these deities with Yahweh19. The name IHVH has been recorded 850 BC in a 34-lined inscription at the Meshastele.

The colour codes Red and Blue One of the illusions left from deluded symbolism is the idea of the colours red and blue as mere decorations or as simple symbols for the red blood and the blue sky. Studying the Book Exodus we will find these colour combinations 25 times as divine commands for the Covenant tent and Solomon's temple. 17:

Genesis by Rashi (1040-1105) and Rashbam (1085-1174) Latin: “Mothers of Reading”, see Matres Lectionis 19: See the documentation in: The Sky-God Dyæus 18:

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Therefore these symbols red and blue certainly have been applied for basic symbolism, which has also been encoded in the letters IU in the name Yahweh. In later eras red and blue have been prescribed for icons, for paintings and in imperial clothes. An old scripture, which has been preserved from my elementary school, documents the red and blue illustrations20 for Adam and Eve, which have been prescribed by a catholic priest in 1954. This document illustrates the vivid existence of the red & blue symbolism in 1954.

Fig. 2: Adam (in red) and Eve (in blue)

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see the documentation in Religionsunterricht 1954 (in Dutch language)

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Fig. 3: Adam and Eve after the Fall of Man (in Purple)

As soon as Muhammad founded the religion of Islam he chose another colour (Green) to identify the boundaries between Christianity and Hebrew religions, which traditionally had been using the symbols red, blue and purple.

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Disillusion of religious symbolism Most of the remaining symbols are being overseen or misinterpreted. A disillusion of these misinterpreted symbols may probably remove the delusion and restore the insight. The idea of a common religious core IU, which has been preserved in the Hebrew and Indoeuropean religions may prove that a global, common Deity may have existed. Disillusions will reveal the symbolism we have in common. In the following chapters we will proceed to apply disillusions to understand a great number of delusions. Delusions will be found in any niche of society and from these examples we will learn to accept that illusions are a common element in society.

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7 Politics Illusions belong to the most important tools for all politicians, ranging from democracy to despotism. Most politicians do not even need to invent illusions, as the voters are too eager to feed them with their own illusions. After a number of years most voters however loose their interest and do not even invest the trouble of filling a ballot card. Each political system may easily be undermined by client politics in which wealthy “clients” are willing to “donate” for benevolent laws. Politicians and voters prefer to react helplessly, but maybe a disillusion helps to at least understand how it works. According to Gustavus Myers' study21 a vast majority of American fortunes must have been based on blackmail and corruption. A small amount of the stolen money used to be “invested” to delude the population. Generally the rest of the capital was to be dissipated in luxury for the offspring. However there is no good reason to guess whether the European fortunes may have used other methods to gather their fortunes. In earlier eras a government merely needed an army of soldiers with some sharp swords to convince people to obey the laws. Most of these soldiers have been forced to join the army by some form of shanghaiing22, which also had been practised in kidnapping sailors. 21:

History of the Great American Fortunes by Gustavus Myers (1909), completely based on law protocols 22: Shanghaiing refers to the practice of conscripting men as sailors by coercive techniques such as trickery, intimidation, or violence.

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In contrast modern politics rely on illusions, which largely rely on language, history and religion.

The disillusion of Politics Strictly spoken donations, corruption and blackmail tend to transform any form of democracy into plutocracy, in which the donation level controls political activities. Inasmuch money allows you to buy any aristocratic title plutocracy and aristocracy must be considered as equivalent to democracy. In effect these system may as well be considered identical. In order to stop the corruption in politics you may choose a left-winged party, but this will only force the capital to leave your country and invite poverty to settle down. Now at this point there is only one illusion left to be disillusioned. How are we going to save democracy? To save democracy the voters are invited to gather a larger amount of donations than the richest client. Basically the larger amount of donations will always be able to control politics. Yes, these disillusions are harsh words, but the insight may help you to generate enough courage to turn your attention to the next chapter disillusioning the banking business...

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8 The disillusioning of Banking Business In 2010 the Leprosy Centre23 at City of London expects business as usual. After pumping zillions of Dollars into the ramshackle finance business the global players are prepared to start a new run for the rest of it. A total amount of 1,6 trillion Euros seems to have been dumped into the system to save the illusion of saving global economics. Right now the interest on savings deposits is rather low, but debit interests are already surging and the public finances are disordered for the next decades. The bankers have proven to be completely incapable, but there are no alternatives...

The Lehmann limit Having survived the crisis the remaining bankers are aware that a bank must overcome a minimal limit to reach the sacrosanct status. The bottom line for inviolability may be considered as the Lehmann Limit to honour the catastrophic institute, which must have missed the limit by an eyelash. A new banker generation is puzzling how to surpass the Lehmann limit. From this limit onward any fool may easily be able to gamble with public money and to be sure to have governmental protection in trading a new generation of credit derivates. Anyway the year 2010 will certainly generate new maxima for the premium bonuses. This is going to be a really rich year! 23:

The „Leprosy Centre“ in the City of London is a square mile full of banking business, earning 9% of the British Gross National Product/GNP respectively 13,9% of all British Earnings.

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The disillusion of saving money Money and bankers are the mother-of-all illusions. Traditionally saved money is considered to be a safe deposit for the senior and aged people. Today this idea must be considered as an illusion. Saved money is merely a gambling tool for the new banker generation. As long as both investors and politicians are unaware what is going on in the capital market there is no good reason for bankers to waist time for a solid education. A good reputation may help to find a banking job, but previous minor convictions may be acceptable in most cases. Generally depositors are so naïve they do not even know how to calculate interests or the effects of inflation. Most of them are completely unaware of the specific characters of shares and bonds. In order to calculate the capital which is being prepared for destruction a simple rule of thumb may be applied. In general the elder generations may have saved two or three annual incomes for their pensioning. This amount may be estimated to reach a maximum of 10% of a lifetime revenue. In the course of later life this provision for old age will be consumed. Of course this provision is expected to be protected by the laws. The last thing on my mind would be to leave this savings to any of those investment bankers. Bankers are merely interested in the money... The mechanisms manipulating our savings must be considered as illusions. However in an ageing society the amount of these savings is surging to limits at which politicians and people suddenly feel themselves at the mercy of investment bankers.

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In fact the first banking crisis of 2008 is merely a prelude to a planned series of impending blackmails to society, which will be concatenated until society finally collapses. According to evolution theory most natural parasites may have evolved up to the level to eat so much as to let their host survive the parasitism, but this strategy requires a clever parasite and there is only little hope this insight is to come in time... Financial dependencies between politicians and bankers inhibit any sound regulations. Politicians need flourishing economics as bad as an addict depends on the needle. A rehab might help, but where is the rehab-institute for this kind of drug addiction? It will have to be planned first. Right now we witness a large scale disillusion. Politicians feel helpless and erect Potemkin24 villages which are merely waiting to be disillusioned. Maybe we should be looking for a new and last medicine to overcome the depressive disillusions reaching us...

24:

Potemkin villages were purportedly fake settlements erected at the direction of Russian minister Grigory Potyomkin to fool Empress Catherine II during her visit to Crimea in 1787. According to this story, Potyomkin, who led the Crimean military campaign, had hollow facades of villages constructed along the desolate banks of the Dnieper River in order to impress the monarch and her travel party with the value of her new conquests, thus enhancing his standing in the empress' eyes.

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9 The last medicine Right now the costs for medical care are surging into the sky. Of course nobody is seriously trying to stop or even investigate the reason for this escalation. As usual the client politics will take care of the donations to proceed business as usual. Each decade the number of brand new medicines is being halved. The era of new medicaments like antibiotics, blood pressure regulators, statins, antidepressants, chemotherapy, tranquillizer and contraceptives is over. We are ready to overcome aids, hart attacks, malaria and any number of other diseases. On the other hand the pharmaceutical industry demands a maximal amount of money for their service. A large team of researchers and staff is waiting to be paid from pharmaceutics. Modern medicines cost as much as an annual middle class car for each patient: that is a new car for each year for a small box of medicines! The development for new medicines costs approximately one billion Euros, which will have to be paid back within a few years. As long as the staff in pharmaceutical industry cannot be reduced in parallel to the declining pharmaceutics market the costs for pharmaceutics will expand up to explosive levels.

The last Medicine In 1997 forty brand new pharmaceutics have been introduced to the market. Ten years later the number had declined to seventeen. If we extrapolate the numbers we may expect one or two innovative medicines annually. The last medicine will costs us a complete national budget. 27

That's what happens if we expand budgets regardless of costs. Having disillusioned the pharmaceutical industry we may investigate the technological wonders to help us in our struggle for life. After all technology helped us to invent the benedictory wheel and the dividend spending car industry...

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10 Blind faith in Technology The blind faith in risky technology culminated in nuclear technology. These hazards had been well known before Chernobyl, but the disillusion had to wait for the explosion. Right now the memorization of the victims seems to decay and like the return of nature at the hillsides of an erupted volcano the new victims are already settling near the disposal centres for radioactive waste and reactors. By now the nuclear power lobby has reached the phase of advertising a green pasture with happy cows as an illusion of safety in operations and disposal industry. Disillusions at damages and leaking disposal storages are being ignored by outsourcing the risks. Costly damages are being shuffled off to the public cash boxes. The dividends have been reserved for the shareholders. Irresponsibility seems to be the keyword. The crises in banking, in retirement benefits, in global warming and other areas are so overwhelming we cannot expect people to consider any future nuclear crisis as a serious problem. On the other hand past catastrophes are a God's Act, which need to be repaired anyway.

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11 Summary Delusions and illusions belong to the saddest sides of our lives, but we are lucky to have the associated remedy of disillusion at our disposal... Yes, disillusion isn't bad as it provides us with ample insight, revealing the truth, which should enjoy our hearts! A lifelong happiness must be considered as Maya – the Indian version of illusions. But whoever strives to free himself from Maya will have to struggle in disillusioning his environment. He will need to disillusion his religion, to be followed by justice and politics, his banking plans and energy sources, etcetera. The lifetime's building needs to be erected anew. Not a stone is going to be left standing. Now man and woman seem to have equal rights if we reconstitute the ancient idea of an androgynous deity. We may reinstall and accept the idea of a donation-controlled democracy, which may as well be named plutocracy or aristocracy. In order to call it democracy we may guarantee a public donation which is chosen somewhat larger than the largest client group's donation. But these donations may as well disappear like a small grain of mustard seed in the next wave of investment collapses... At this time confidence in nuclear technology has been disillusioned for good, but compared to the other crises another future nuclear calamity cannot scare average citizen.

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Yes the Indian wise men are right. Pure happiness is to be found in a gently, gently deluding Maya. I consider disillusioning lethargic25 fellow men as a too arduous job. You will all be forgiven as soon as I reach the borders of the river Lethe26 myself. For this reason the word disillusion is an illusion in itself. As anything in life it cannot keep its promises. Life is an illusion, which cannot be disillusioned completely.

Period!

25:

A state of apathy with lack of emotion or interest. In Greek mythology, Lethe was one of the five rivers of Hades. Lethe flowed around the cave of Hypnos and through the Underworld, where all those who drank from it experienced complete forgetfulness. Lethe is related to the Greek word for "truth", aletheia (αλήθεια), meaning "un-forgetfulness" or "un-concealment". 26:

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