Just recently announced in the British Daily Mail newspaper first, but since covered widely, were the top fifty British authors according to a poll of 2,000 readers by Amazon UK.
It was a poll made by illiterates of the views of other illiterates.
If we forget about compiling a list of all those who were not included, suffice to say that apparently, none of the people polled had heard of Charles Dickens, although of course their excuse would be that anyone who penned the very worst and most absurd opening lines of any book ever - 'It was the best of times, it was the worst of times' - would certainly not be able to be included in any such list of elevated and merit-worthy personages.
I have just now been toying with heading the post here: 'Whom The Gods Wish To Destroy' - but I have to say, that nowhere that I know of in any actual ancient Greek sources does it say such a thing in fact. There are a few vague possible candidates but as for the mainstream of Classical philosophers they were all of the view that the Gods blessed men when they made them 'mad.'
Being driven to a frenzy by the Furies is not the same exact thing as when the gods cause someone to have a divinely-inspired frenzy...
Shakespeare, on the other hand, places those types of words and sentiments into the mouth of Mark Antony, when he makes Antony deliver his famous eulogy over the body of Caesar - which of course was a thing that did factually happen in history - and make him say 'And men have lost their reason.'
He means that the leading figures of the Senate had lost their minds when they sought to resolve their own issues, and their issues against Caesar, by resorting to murder.
That they were not able to devise intellectual means to resolve what were essentially intellectual arguments, was testament to the clear fact that they had literally lost their power to reason.
...Or perhaps that their reasoning alone, had no power to effect the change they wanted.
I have also been deliberately avoiding talking about or posting pics of one or other of the strange and crazy ways to 'invest.'
However to cut a long story short, and to at least give some sort of a hint, before the Queen died, a few of the 'commemorative' coins the Australian Mint was making, had gone up in price from two dollars on issue, to around twenty bucks, and then quickly to sixty or seventy in secondary collectors' markets... ...And soon after she had passed on, one particular one of them went to five hundred dollars in good condition, even though nonetheless 'circulated.'
UK 2 Pound, Charles Dickens collectors coin. |
Those of you who have recently been getting very close to 'something going on' outside of the normal Earth community, will know that there is a mistake being made by those who talk about 'Doom' and 'E-of-the-W' and all of this.
It is crystal clear in the Biblical New Testament too, but has always also been missed in analysis by those outside of the 'inner groups' of those people there at the start. And this is that if you suddenly took off on some space ship at age say, thirty-five - it would give no scope for other, much more 'ordinary life' people, to reach any kind of necessary 'enlightenment' along the profile of their naturally lived progress of learning and gaining experience (if they were over thirty-five for example and thought then they had missed some kind of age-related opportunity; or if they were much much older and then thought they had been completely passed over and forgotten about). And then also no doubt, people would imagine it was necessary to be 'recreated' at some optimum physical age - because everything really important is always physical to the standard human mind; they only pay lip service to 'invisible' ideas and the moral equation.
What the effect would be if half a dozen people suddenly embarked upon craft from some super advanced, but not Earth-sourced/located civilization, is that those looking on would presume that 'suddenly' anyone could or might be allowed 'in,' as it were. And then that would be for some 'automatic reason' therefore... Whereas the reasoning person would more suppose that this was a process, and likely a very long one too, and that a person could start that process at any age and not just expect to push some button and have everything be 'automatic' and like a fantasy miracle in which their whole mind and mindset dramatically improved magically over night. aka they were 'magicked.' LOL
Well if that were to really happen in such a way, even the person to whom it was happening, might not then even recognize their own 'new' selves as being them at all, since the distance could conceivably be so far apart between what they had been and the kinds of ways they were used to thinking - and their new paradigm.
Of course they would still possess their own consciousness, except they wouldn't recognize the person in whom it was residing.
The Bible says 'line by line and precept upon precept.' It doesn't say that your mind and the sets of tools available to your mind will suddenly change or 'appear' in a twinkling of an eye!
It says your body can be changed in a twinkling of an eye. Not your mind.
So the first thing for all those here to appreciate, who have already been 'messing around' with some ET Aliens, or 'angelic beings' or whatever you want to call them, is that it's not a good idea - not a morally good idea - to show off to others by suddenly exhibiting 'Siddhi powers' in front of them or turning up in clothes from another planet!
How is 'ascending in the clouds of the heavens' (or the cloudy sky or any other description of it) in front of a bunch of dumb ignorant people going to help them actually work on themselves?! They'll all be looking around for instantaneous miraculous things to be done to them, instead of working on those changes themselves first from inside of themselves and at least in good part using their own existing resources of their own hearts and minds and wills to do good.
And it says it exactly like that in the New Testament! It does not say that anyone back then is looking ahead for some future 'Doomsday' scenario - it clearly establishes a whole long process of time and a profile of these things, which includes some people having some sudden 'change' at some later phase in the profile of the whole human race, but that mostly proposes an on-going and slow 'up-grading' of the moral and intellectual complexion of individuals and then of their small groups and perhaps of society at large but much more likely that society at large falls completely and fails.
This idea that people were looking for some 'prophesied future moment' is a complete misreading of the texts in question.
Even those who constructed the Quran fell for this misunderstanding - they have it that there is going to be some 'evil' top-line figure (the Dajjal) at 'the Last Days,' who will be pursued by 'Isa' who has 'returned' (supposedly this is 'Jesus'), and then literally killed at the 'Gate of Lot' (wherever that is, could be Ludgate in London for all anyone really knows about the textual references) and thus doing away with evil. Well that's just silly to begin with.
People do sad and wicked things not because there is some guy 'Dajjal' around the place 'making it so' on the behavior of Mankind -, or some 'Satan,' but because they, the ordinary humans themselves, cannot control their own base greed or their own intentions for gain, and their selfishness and ego-centered personal selves.
The logical problem with the conception about some 'Doomsday/Final Return' scenario is how does Jesus get to be such a long inaccessible way away for two thousand years already ('as of someone going on a long journey'), and yet 'already near to the door' even at that primary time of Paul?
If you reduce the question to a 'not-specifically Christian' Cosmology and theology and even just philosophy, then the idea is simply that if there is a Divinity, then you ought to be able to reach out to it and find it right away - otherwise it is not a Divinity at all and is being constrained to some hypothetical 'time-lock of the future Apocalyptic moment.' The definition of Divinity (one of the necessary aspects) is that it is not locked by time. The 'EOTW' was already yesterday, if you know what I mean.
If you exchange the question for the advanced ET Alien paradigm, and admit the Paul Wallis conception that Aliens have been here for a long time since deep back down even in ancient human history, and the modern physics paradigm that time dilation is a fact of anyone who is able to traverse such vast distances required 'faster than light-speed' - then getting up on board a 'space ship' is a 'today/this afternoon/now' thing, potentially, and it may well be that you will see something from horizon to horizon with the force, the power, and the impact brighter than the Sun, while others see nothing at all. For just everyone to see it all at once repudiates the possibility of Universal 'salvation;' that is, for the many. However for you, it is for the few - for you the process is already over substantially. For you it is Sense8. It is the Chrysalids. And it always has been since the Phaeacians of the court of Alcinous danced the dance of the War Goddess for Odysseus thousands of years ago somewhere, maybe in the Adriatic, on an island, hidden in mists. And before that as well.