garykrepak

[garykrepak]

We have Plato to thank for scribing his recollections of the teachings of Socrates. Whom was given the death penalty by a jury of a hundred for “Corrupting the minds of youth” for his teachings of questioning of authority and of rigorous self-examination of morals. Also he faced charges for “atheism” by his not worshipping the gods of Athens. He, declaring that he was doing God’s work. This stance, making any claims if actual Atheism moot. He left no writings of his own hand behind him. (Sound familiar?)

We have Plato to thank for his posthumous transmission of Socratic Philosophy and Socratic Method thqt would be so obviously demonstrated four hundred years later. (Sound familiar?)

Jesus is qouted all over the Gospels using Soctratic Method. His demonstrating this by the use of questions to guide people towards deeper understanding and truth. Which had become very common in the years surrounding his lifetime in that part of the world.

Matthew 16:13-17:

Matthew 22:41-46:

Mark 6:20-21:

Luke 10:25-37:

John 4:9-10:

Matthew 7:24-27:

All of these “red letter” parables of linguistics can all be traced back to one historical source.

Socrates and the Socratic Method which became so prevalent in that part of the world by then.

Another man that died for teaching what he thought was right. Believing he was divinely inspired while never gaining anything but a few literate witnesses and the ire of oligarchs, that wanted him dead. All while never leaving his own writings behind. Leaving it up to his students to carry his message along, to be translated into other languages. And to be largely regarded as an ethical and moral standard by which to think and live by.

Both, demanding inquiry of authority. Both, embracing the spiritual rather than the material.

Let’s give it up for Socrates. For inventing the manner of philosophy echoed for the Gospels.

John, being the most obvious adopter of Socratic Method of the Apostles.

I’d really like to see 1st century manuscripts of his work. Before they became stylized centuries later to suit the impression of “univocality” so demanded by the biased compilers of the adopted Canon.

Let’s give it up to Socrates. And Jesus. For being rebels to the end. And leaving nothing but quickly fading memories and translators for us to have parabpes to unravel.

[garykrepak]

[garykrepak]

I want a stage and an audience with zero political correctness within them. Wild and untethered to the terrestrial or commercial.

My natural environment. Not being dosed up with meds to be able to convert resentful hours to produce for shareholders while running out of money between checks because i have to pay expensive veterinary specialists to study me and tell me I’m not a horse. “But, take these pills to make you act like one. Remember. You live on a farm. Not the savanna.”Struggling to bottle up my stream of consciousness until it turns into a poison to my soul. Smiling when i want run and scream. Because I’m surrounded by packs pf hyenas dressed as golden retrievers.

I don’t belong with people. I belong in a space where I can be myself and bring what i make to people. Letting others figure out how to market it.

Thats what Agents are for. Let the business end be someone else’s responsibility. My end is to make things and be strange. Every time I try to sit in a cubicle or sell shit myself it all goes to hell eventually. That mask gets itchy and the second I take it off to rest my neck and to breathe easier and see better, all of a sudden everyone freaks out.

My entire early adulthood I felt like a zebra running behind a herd of broken horses. They were either racing to make their owners and trainers money. In trade for higher grades of food and nicer stables. Or they were busy being yoked in teams to haul heavy carts. Hauling someone else’s goods to market. Meanwhile, I’m at the back of the herd. Making weird noises, eating mushrooms and mounting the mares that got too curious.

Made a couple of zorses along the way and I had to get yoked for a couple of decades. Selfom ever really made for or belonging to the tasks I signed up for. Because, I had to have more food and keep bigger stables. And I tried my level best with my best intentions. Sometimes it all got to be too much. It all became so unnatural for me. Too uncomfortable. I felt fake. I treasure authenticity and the only time I got to be true to myself was when I got to run around and make weird noises in the wilderness. Hoping the herd would show up. Then load up my own cart with my toys and run off to another place and do it all over again. Until. That felt fake and I’d melt down and not do anything but eat, sleep and beat myself up for acting like a horse. I’d make something new. Hyenas would arrive and I’d have to run off to be broken again. So I could be yoked again.

Typing of the internet my savanna today.

Thanks for attending my TED talk.

[garykrepak]

[garykrepak]

I learned a new word yesterday “Apostasy”.

And that sums up why I’ve never been able to click with the dogmas of any narrow band of philosophical or religious system, I always have questions.

I have been told “You are too smart for this…” so many times. And it was never from a place of sarcasm. They were being serious. I had questions that couldn’t be answered. And their systems are set up for unquestioning compliance rather than inquiry.

I WANT to put all my chips in. I WANT buy buy in and get behind and be a part of ANYTHING that makes sense.

So when you hand me some books and I find things out about the books. Because, I’m inquisitive. And over decades, I find out things that normally are only known by PhD level scholars. And I bring that information forward to lay preachers and congregants. They get angry. Because I found data that doesn’t support every dogma.

And I learn and research and do everything short of learn Sumerian and Ancient Hebrew and Aramaic and Ancient Greek and later Coptic languages to understand these books I’ve fallen in love with. Only to find out that MAAAYYYBE. What we are being told about them and the modern dogmas built around them have almost nothing to do with the historical context and intent in which they were authored.

Worse yet. The very earliest manuscripts of some books do not include foundational passages that are found in later manuscripts. The ones their entire belief system is based upon. That… some of the most ancient of stories that happened nearly four thousand years ago have absolutely no trace in archaeology or any written occurrence of them that dates before the third century B.C.E.

And I discover many devout, passionate scholars and clergy who went on their own academic journeys of understanding. Only to throw their hands up and walk away from all of it.

Because the data will never support the dogmas that lured them in. What can be held in their hands in their ealiest forms. Does not and will never be reconciled with theological conventions of the modern world.

There you go. Some morning Apostasy. And why ai can’t attend service with John Travolta.

[garykrepak]

Johnny and June. Trying to mooch some barbecue.

[garykrepak]

Having a fleet of black cars around and having to keep them all clean is a real challenge this time of year.

Between the weather and the green pollen from the trees. Keeping them all looking good is hard.

It’s like, one minute you are fresh out of the wash and the car looks like a gleaming hunk of carved onyx.

Only to come outside the next morning after a light rain and it looks like I had snuck out in the night to shoot a botanical bukkake scene for its OF page.

[garykrepak]

[garykrepak]

Another era of Oligarchs saddles up.

As if they weren’t in control the entire time…

An acceleration of resources shoved to the top. Another period of legislative belligerence custom made for the few while pandering to the purposefully constructed outrage of the many.

Another blue pill for the next generation to choke upon while they Pat themselves on the back for empowering interests that never cared about them in the first place. They all pulled the wagon of oligarchs down the road custom built to speed the interests of shareholders, yoked to the load of capitalism, while chasing the carrot of a heretical theocracy cloaked as righteousness dangled before them.

Fed lies and empty promises, they toil towards voting booths hoping their porridge to become ribeyes. Pulling the levers demanded by Pastors.

They install puppets for bankers and military contractors and pharmaceutical executives.

They install posturing blowhards that are little more than slaves themselves.

They are all the same. Some wear crosses to appease their masses. Others wear rainbows or tie dyed shirts. At the end of the day, they are all bitches for masters and working for the same ends in different disguises.

It’s all a sham. And they made us look at each other as enemies.

They split us in two and are now calling for unity. To what ends? For whose benefit?

They pledge to deport the only highly skilled tradesmen in the county. Failing to see that the current generation have never plowed a field or held a hammer. They want to deport the only people that tend the greenhouse, henhouse, plow the fields, harvest our crops and butcher our cattle.

Our children are largely useless without apps and know nothing of producing tangible products.

We need immigrants here to feed us and to build. Until such time as our sons are taught Industrial Arts and Agriculture once again.

My misgivings and policy disputes aside.

I sincerely hope that the executive, legislative, judicial, diplomatic and military products of this next four years ultimately prove to be beneficial to the Republic in the long run.

That’s all I have to say about that.

[garykrepak]

In the “Old Testament”

El created:

YHWH, a storm God. To be the God of Judea and only had jurisdiction on the land of Judea

Also In the Hebrew Bible:

El also created:

Baal: A Canaanite storm god

Asherah: A mother goddess figure of the sea

Astarte: A foreign, non-Jewish god

Chemosh: A foreign, non-Jewish god

Dagon: A foreign, non-Jewish god

Moloch: A foreign, non-Jewish god

Tammuz: A foreign, non-Jewish god

As cited in the Hebrew Bible, each of these Gods had their own geographical jurisdictions regardless of ethnicities contained within those borders.

It was the storm god YHWH that came to Moses OUTSIDE of the borders of Judea and demanded that no other Gods be put before the people of Israel. Okay… that’s weird. But we’ll continue.

At the same time… later in the Bible.

Jewish military commanders were taking cart loads of dirt from Judea (because at that time, Israel was a group of people and not a place on a map) so that their storm God YHWH could wield its power along with the Arc of the Covenant in battles. Because, remember, this almighty God of their chosing simultaneously had no power outside of Judea and at the same time could appear to Moses in what is now Saudi Arabia.

All of this warfare to target people worshiping other Gods who were given jurisdiction by El in that given geographical area. Where they commenced to massacre people and livestock in ways that I don’t want to type here.

Let’s dig the hole deeper.

Help me make sense of this.

El disappears from the Canon.

This high deity that created all of the Gods all of a sudden vanished and was nowhere to be found while one of its offspring was going around committing genocide of all that worship the other Gods of its creation and dominion,

Did El go on vacation? Did YHWH win supernatural dominion over planet Earth in a poker game with El?

And NOWHERE is El or any of the other Gods of the second Millenia near east mentioned again in the New Testament. They just disappear like they never existed,

YHWH gets rebranded Jehovah sometime before and all of a sudden is in control of everything.

It’s like a corporate hostile takeover of a continent and they summoned a hippy spokesperson with a really sketchy backstory to make us Gentiles worship Him and his Dad YHWH or Jehovah or… yeah THAT God and the new sidekick, Holy Spirit. Who likes to show up and make people talk in tongues and perform healings at their parties on Sunday.

Later down the road. A bunch of dudes in robes and funny hats in Rome, Alexandria, Turkey and Greece decide to make a big book about it all and create a bunch of strange rules that aren’t supposed to be questioned, almost none of the new rules have anything to do with what their Messiah preached.

Help me make sense of it all.

I can’t ask Clergy. They get angry looks when I do.

[garykrepak]

Some people are living with things that they don’t have safe audiences to share them with. Sometimes it’s a relationship. Sometimes it’s something health related. Sometimes it’s financial. Sometimes it’s neurodivergent in nature. Sometimes it’s professional.

They just trudge along carrying all of that alone.

I’m blessed to have a family that cares about the challenges and blessings going on. I’ve got a huge group of mentors I can bounce things off of. No matter how thrown off they are. If I get out of line, they tell me so.

I tried at times to keep it all bottled up and it just made me sicker. There’s also a number of people in my life that regret ever asking me “How’s (whatever) going for you?”. Because, I’ll tell them precisely how it’s going. When all they were doing was trying to be polite and have a light conversation. When you’ve got heavy things going on, you’re looking for an outlet for that. Not light, surface level banter. I’m guilty of not knowing when to be spare in my answers. When to not allow my stream of consciousness flood out in real time. They wanted the surface conditions and I pulled them down with an anchor to the depths of my concerns.

If I’ve done that to you. I apologize.

When people do that. They need to be heard and they need to hear themselves say it. To better help themselves process it.

[garykrepak]

I recently made several posts and comments that echoed some life-long concerns of mine that have been partially satisfied.

I have only recently found a pool of people with very similar interests and unlike me. They have degrees from multiple distinguished universities and they have representative PhDs. They have spent their entire academic lives learning how to research and articulate and publish their findings on the subject. They often read and fluently speak several ancient languages of the near east. They seek out and study ancient texts and cultures and especially religions. They do this not in an effort to reinforce modern theological interpretations. But they seek to understand the intentions of the texts’ authors and to base their findings considering the wider historical contexts present upon their composition. They often encounter many ancient manuscripts of the same writings and they have to determine which of these are the earliest, most complete and least edited of them. They NEVER encounter manuscripts that are originals of the author. What they most often encounter are copies that are hundreds of years newer than the original compositions. This is especially true of both whole and fragmentary manuscripts of books that would later be included (or later excluded) in what would become the New Testament. In the last two to three hundred years, an incredible amount of ancient manuscripts have been discovered and/or made available for scholarly review and study.

The Torah, or Old Testament. Has its earliest manuscript examples in the form of Greek manuscripts and the recently discovered and translated fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Both, dating many centuries after the periods that the books were probably originally composed.

Because so many of their findings based upon objective scholarship have demonstrated a lack of harmony with the understanding of theologians that were basing their theology on less scientific information. These scholars are sometimes met with fervent opposition. This is not a new problem.

Some of the first European scribes to come back from reading early Greek scrolls, were actually murdered for publishing or even verbalizing their discoveries that ran counter to the interests of the church leaders of their time. Often, they did so at the behest of whatever King was funding their ministerial efforts of the time. They were political assassinations more than they were killed for committing actual heresy.

Today. The professional term for reviewing and more deeply understanding ancient texts and publishing the findings, is called Critical Scholarship.

They come from many countries, religious backgrounds and from varying academic disciplines. They do not seek to prove or disprove anything. They simply seek to understand what is available to be studied and to represent their translations absolutely as accurately as they can. Word for word. As one very prominent scholar puts it. “Data over Dogma”.

It isn’t their job to instill a spiritual interpretation on any given document. They are simply doing their best to make sure that the modern world has access to the literal words as they were intended to be read. Your spiritual interpretation is your personal prerogative. Religion, in its myriad of traditions, cultures and theology. Is there to guide you as to how they want you to interpret it based upon their preferences, spiritual interpretations, and their understandings.

Many of them will declare traditions of univocality and inerrancy and lack of contextual conflict and all manner of ways to elevate your spiritual perception and experience with whichever translation of the Canon they prefer. Some versions are based upon older manuscripts than others. Therefore some of the versions have some verses that differ from others. Or some may use various expressions of the English language than others. Oddly enough. The ones that used the oldest expression of English are based upon manuscripts that are hundreds of years newer than the source material used for more modern versions.

These paragraphs would have gotten me killed or excommunicated not all that long ago.

Because religious zealots are more interested in being in control than they ever were about carrying out the actual intended ministry of Jesus Christ. The most fascinating man that ever lived.

If you are going to call yourself a Christian. Then do as he did. Guide them to God rather than a religion, Feed the hungry, heal the sick, forgive sinners, demonstrate Grace, flip the tables of bankers, and show Love whenever possible no matter who they are, how they are dressed, what country they are from, and make apostles of women. Western Evangelicals like to ignore the fact that Jesus’ longest conversation in the Bible was him training woman to spread his Ministry.

This is probably the last time I am going to post about this subject. As I have my understanding of how I practice spirituality and I am not qualified to preach. All I could do is share some of my understanding for a minute, in hopes that it clicks with some.

Now. Go spread actual Love.

[garykrepak]

Not being exposed to broadcast commercial radio for nearly a decade has done wonders for my conscious desire to dissociate from mediocrity.

I trealize that most people are fine with being spoon fed music (mental content) picked for them by label executives and people that sell commercials.

I prefer my content from creatives. I prefer other content that sounds like it was selected by a dude in a still-carpeted dive bar leaning on a jukebox to soothe his broken heart, pending legal woes and empty wallet.

I don’t dig people celebrate seemingly perfect lives. I know better. After decades of accepting requests from people it left me with a keen sense of who listens to what and for what reasons. Some folks escape into musical fantasy. Others want a harsher version of their realities. Others want an authentic dispensation of their momentary bliss. Others seek to set adrift on memory bliss for the same reasons.

Jukeboxes are musical medicine cabinets. You can tell a lot about someone by what they pull from it and hand out to the rest of the room.

[garykrepak]

Just a smidge

of the ‘tism

Is all

It takes

To make everything

Strange

Don’t smile

Don’t laugh

Can’t look ‘em

In the eye

Thinking too hard

What’s that smell

Why’s this place

Sound like shit?

How did that dumb

Song become a hit?

Talking too long

On things they

Don’t care bout

Just a smidge

Just a smidge

Just a smidge

Of the ‘tism

©️2023 G.T.K.

[garykrepak]

I wanna start a social club for people living with ASD. It would be a dark, soothing space with silent espresso machines and baristas that are forbidden from speaking. Except for one, who’s a licensed Psychotherapist.

All coffee and food orders and payment via app.

The background music would be very deep and meaningful and immersive at times. Never vapid or dissonant.

The room will be heavily acoustically treated as to not give offending reflections.

Asparagus and peas and cabbage are utterly forbidden from the menu.

The coffees MUST have character and not be too acidic or bland. Flavored roasts are forbidden.

It would be staffed by Aspies. Who would argue a lot and demand perfection at all times.

1/4 of the invites would show up. The rest would overthink their way into staying in their home; Waiting on reviews for next time.

The decor would be totally comfortable and every fabric and wood grain meticulously curated into a non-offensive atmosphere of dim luxury and comfort. All color temperatures from lighting selected for comfort and flattery rather than economy.

We’d all stand around never making eye contact and waiting for something important to be said. Then engage in argumentative depths of rabbit-holery. Delivered in an oddly hand flapping, deadpan verbal way that would make Normies’ eyes glaze over.

We’d all leave in disgust when conversation attempted to turn to small talk.

There will be booths with walls of silence and privacy.

Two chess tables.

Cannabis-Friendly smoking patio (busiest spot)

Library that adheres to Dewey Decimal System.

Reading room where speech is forbidden.

There’s always gonna be that one table with a couple with tangible chemistry that won’t actually hook up because one is afraid that the other will sound even worse in bed than they do out of it.

Silent disco but every DJ is in sync and in key so the subs don’t throw us off as we demonstrate how poorly we can dance.

Graffiti of legible writing in the bathrooms.

A cultural haven of comfort and honesty that would make corporations cringe in its bluntness and lack of buzz-wordery.

I’d call it The Banned Mask

[garykrepak]

I just can’t do dogma without data.

It is very hard for me to whole heartedly, unquestionably Embrace documents that have incredibly questionable authorship, chain of custody, provenance, transparency and possesses absolutely proven instances of generational mistranslation, and take them as seriously as I do the laws of physics.

I get the messages and the morals and ethics they are trying to convey. And I respect them.

The dogma that varies from one congregation to another… always troubled me. The cult-like compliance of culture and dogmas… always made me feel like I didn’t belong.

The stuff that some make up that isn’t even mentioned in the books are made out to be somehow canonical when they can’t even be found in the most thoroughly researched concordances. Attempting to draw parallels to modern concepts that didn’t exist in the ancient Hebrew language. To me. The red letters are the only ones that really matter in some contexts. And I’d love for some first century Aramaic or Hebrew or Greek manuscripts of first-hand accounts to support them once and for all.

I DO have Faith. Just, not always in what men have to say about it.

I am, “all in”, I’m just curious. So curious I was compared to a Jew for asking so many questions.

I think that person neglected to remember at the time. Was that Jesus spent a great deal of time asking questions as he taught. 307 of them were quoted in the canon. I am sure that’s only a tiny fragment of the total asked during his documented accounts of his three year ministry. He asked so many questions Because. That’s what Rabbis did and do.

They question everything to get a better perspective and understanding of the subject. If you aren’t asking questions are you a teacher? Or, are you just being a bully pushing your dogma?