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Once upon a time it was believed that if the Pope excommunicated a country it would undergo a terrible catastrophe. Its citizens would be unable to marry, be buried, educated or healed by medicine. Hospitals (all church run) would be shut down, schools (likewise church run) would collapse and there could be no safe system of commerce because the priests administered the oaths. Times have changed. They sure have. These once firmly-held beliefs have now been transferred from the Church onto the State. If there was no government, the argument goes, there could be no schools, no hospitals, and so on. Like it or not, men and women are essentially enslaved to this huge heavily-bureaucratised belief-system. It is alarming how easily people— through fear, misinformation and the distortions of history— are conscripted into this complicity. Everywhere people are tethered to the idea that the world has to be the way that it is because any change might appear to the authorities to be impertinent.
I can't find a direct link to what looks like a wonderfully disrespectful publication, but the rest of this extract can be found here on page 2 in the May 2005 issue of The Individual.
It is taken from "The Cunningham Amendment". You can find out more about them here
Written, printed, and distributed by a group of Yorkshire free-thinkers calling themselves “Anarcrisps,” the Cunningham Amendment is a beautiful, witty declaration of independence from across the pond
The
Cunningham Amendment
1005
Huddersfield Road
Bradford BD12 8LP
West Yorkshire, England
UPDATE: I've reset the link (thanks to Clint Marsh of Wonderella Printed for the updated URL)
Since Galileo, a series of revolutions have overturned our conception of the universe and our role in it. During the Middle Ages, the universe was seen as a dark and forbidding place. Earth was like a small, flat stage, full of corruption and sin, enclosed by a mysterious celestial sphere where omens like comets would terrify kings and peasant alike. And if we were deficient in our praise of God and church we would face the wrath of the theater critics, the self-righteous members of the Inquisition and their hideous instruments of persuasion.
Parallel Worlds, Michio Kaku 2005
Penguin ed pp345-6
I had a rare day out yesterday, sketching and taking photographs. I'm planning some paintings based on the Wiltshire Downs, (inspired by these) and these pastel sketches are the first stages.
Over the course of the day I covered the edges of the Marlborough Downs from the Vale of Pewsey and up over the downs to Marlborough, making perhaps 15-20 rapid sketches on the way.
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