YOUR SOCIETY IS DOOMED

There are many passages in “Atlas Shrugged” which could be written this very minute. You can point to a character and say it is this or that current person. One of my favorites is the one where Dagney is on a train passing a house which is obviously falling apart with a family around a “large television set.” Of course in 1957 that would have been under 20 inches. Dagney was wondering if the people even understood the electricity didn’t magically come from the wall with no understanding of how it was made. I am pretty sure scenes like that exist in every part of the country today. No need to worry. The “smart” people who have never lifted anything heavier than a government document have an infrastructure plan. A small percent might even go toward infrastructure.
Anybody know where they have good deals on black flags?

Harold Percival

The operation of karma is concealed from the minds of men because their thoughts are centered on things which relate to their personality and its attendant sensations. These thoughts form a wall through which the mental vision cannot pass to trace that which connects the thought, with the mind and desire from which it springs, and to understand the actions in the physical world as they are born into the physical world from the thoughts and desires of men. Karma is concealed from the personality, but is clearly known to the individuality, which individuality is the god from whom the personality originates and of which it is a reflection and a shadow.

The details of the workings of karma will remain concealed so long as man refuses to think and act justly. When man will think and act justly and fearlessly, irrespective of praise or blame, then he will learn to appreciate the principle and follow the workings of the law of karma. He will then strengthen, train and sharpen his mind so that it will pierce the wall of thoughts surrounding his personality and be able to trace the action of his thoughts, from the physical through the astral and through the mental to the spiritual and back again into the physical; then he will prove karma to be all that is claimed for it by those who know what it is.

The presence of the karma of humanity and of which presence people are aware, though they are not fully conscious of it, is the source from which comes the vague, instinctual or intuitional feeling that justice rules the world. This is inherent in every human being and because of it, man fears the “wrath of God” and asks for “mercy.”

The wrath of God is the accumulation of wrong actions performed intentionally or ignorantly which, like Nemesis, pursue, ready to overtake; or hang like the sword of Damocles, ready to fall; or like a lowering thunder cloud, are ready to precipitate themselves as soon as the conditions are ripe and circumstances will allow. This feeling of the karma of humanity is shared by all its members, each member thereof having a sense also of his particular Nemesis and thunder cloud, and this feeling causes human beings to try to propitiate some unseen being.

The mercy which is sought for by man is that he will have his just deserts removed or postponed for a time. Removal is impossible, but the karma of one’s actions may be held back for a time, until the suppliant for mercy is able to meet his karma. Mercy is asked by those who feel themselves too weak or too overcome by fear to ask that the law be fulfilled at once.

Besides the feeling of “wrath” or the “vengeance” of God and the desire for “mercy,” there is an inherent belief or faith in man that somewhere in the world—notwithstanding all the seeming injustice which is so apparent in our every-day life—there is, though unseen and not understood, a law of justice. This inherent faith in justice is inborn in the spirit of man, but requires some crisis in which man is thrown upon himself by the seeming injustice of others to call it forth. The inherent feeling of justice is caused by the underlying intuition of immortality which persists in the heart of man, in spite of his agnosticism, materialism and the adverse conditions which he is made to face.

The intuition of immortality is the underlying knowledge that he is able and will live through the seeming injustice which is imposed upon him, and that he will live to right the wrongs which he has done. The sense of justice in the heart of man is the one thing which saves him from cringing for the favor of a wrathful god, and suffering long the whims and patronage of an ignorant, greedy, power-loving priest. This sense of justice makes a man of man and enables him to look fearlessly in another’s face, even though conscious that he must suffer for his wrong. These feelings, of the wrath or the vengeance of god, the desire for mercy, and the faith in the eternal justice of things, are evidence of the presence of the karma of humanity and of a recognition of its existence, though the recognition is sometimes unconscious or remote.

As man thinks and acts and lives according to his thoughts, modified or accentuated by the conditions which prevail, and as like a man, so a nation or whole civilization grows up and acts according to its thoughts and ideals and the prevailing cyclic influences, which are the results of thoughts held still longer ago, so also does humanity as a whole and the worlds in which it is and has been, live and develop from childhood to the highest mental and spiritual attainments, according to this law. Then, like a man, or a race, humanity as a whole, or rather all those members of a humanity who have not reached the ultimate perfection which it is the purpose of that particular manifestation of worlds to reach, die. The personalities and all that relates to personality pass away and the forms of the sensuous worlds cease to exist, but the essence of the world remains, and the individualities as humanity remain, and all pass into a condition of rest similar to that into which man passes when, after the efforts of a day, he puts his body to rest and retires into that mysterious state or realm which men call sleep. With man comes, after sleep, an awakening which calls him to the duties of the day, to the care and preparation of his body that he may perform the duties of the day, which are the result of his thoughts and actions of the previous day or days. Like man, the universe with its worlds and men awakens from its period of sleep or rest; but, unlike man who lives from day to day, it has no physical body or bodies in which it perceives the actions of the immediate past. It must call forth the worlds and bodies through which to act.

That which lives after the death of the man are his works, as the embodiment of his thoughts. The sum total of the thoughts and ideals of a world’s humanity is the karma which lasts, which awakens and calls forth all invisible things into visible activity.