The founders of Amway Jay Van Andel and Rich DeVos, I was told by an Amway distributor are Dutch Reform Christians. It would seem to me their business plan breaches the 10th Commandment. What does anyone else think?
You may not covet your neighbors ox or donkey Is what I just read about the 10th commandment. :unsure: So I'm not sure what they're planning to do with their neighbors animals, but it's sounds very perculiar.
....or anything else that belongs to your neighbor. I think that includes another business' customers.
Probably most advertising breaches that. It actively encourages people to be covetous. And piling up wealth contradicts JC's words 'do not store up treasure on earth'.
christ said pay your taxes to not be distracted by the small stuff. he wasn't endorsing capitolism. most christians, i appreciate their good intentions, but they really haven't got a clew, even about their own christ. they have this legend that their book teaches them, but what really happened is so well hidden between the lines, if i could take them all back there with a time machine, but that would probably not be a very kind thing to do. until john the baptist taught him that he could accomplish more by preaching (and yes practicing) peace then by making war on warriors, he was pretty much a che guivera or fidel castro. its easy to not put two and two together when we don't want to. when we have this idea, we are told all our lives, how some of us may want to believe things are. and there are certainly things no one knows. many more times then everything anyone does. he did have the best intentions all along, and being an enemy combatant against the roman empire's occupation of his homeland was heroically motivated by them. but our universe does not require a center, our species is not that center if it had one, and its not the little green pieces of paper that are unhappy.
But there is undoubtedly a centre to our universe. Even if the universe was shaped like a triangle there's a centre. Square? Centre. Circle? Centre. 1 trillion pointed star shape? There's a centre there.
^ I like the idea that the centre is everywhere. Back to Christians and their deviations from the teachings they claim to hold so dear - it's a common thing that many of JC's sayings are routinely ignored by many so called Christians. For people who were brought up under the religion maybe it's more likely to be so than for a person who has become Christian after deep reflection. In the UK we now have a PM who is a vicar's daughter (and doesn't let us forget that) and claims to be Christian. She evidently sees nothing un-Christian in selling arms to dictators, taking money away from the poor and disabled, and saying she's prepared to launch a nuclear strike in which millions would die. She seems to think it's a Christian thing to bring division where there was unity, strife where there was co-operation, despair where there was hope. She represents what I'd call 'establishment' Christians, who have long ago deviated from any core of light contained in the religion. It's a type of self-delusion. They have some emotional attachment to Christianity as it has been presented to them, and lack the impulse to seek any deeper truth. They also confuse and conflate religion with nationalism, and even a kind of tribalism where they presumably think God only really cares for the rich, for members of their particular church or sect, for people who think in hypocritical terms just as they do. It's about as idiotic as people who imagine that God supports their football team. Christianity has historically been thoroughly mauled by the power holding establishment. At some times used a as vehicle of oppression. Twisted to suit their own agendas. And what we see in these alleged Christians who carry on in what is really a very un-Christian way is the outcome of that. I don't think the damage can be undone, and I doubt that anything of any real significance can be reconstructed from the remnants of whatever the religion may have been at it's inception. Maybe I'm wrong about that - in a way I hope so. Other than a tiny number who seek to revive mysticism in the religion, I see no sign of anything encouraging, and many signs that basically it's a lost cause. A cultural blueprint that has outlived its usefulness. I'm sure there are some sincere people who do try to follow the teachings. But I think they're vastly outnumbered by those who don't. They simply go through a set of external rituals and observations, devoid in most cases of any spiritual content whatsoever. Or they confuse emotionalism with spirituality. They seek to cover up a multitude of sins by saying they 'believe', whatever that means.
I think advertising has some useful functions. TV ads can give a start to budding actors. While advertising to a large degree is about making you think irrationally, it would not appear to me to be to have the level of zealotry of Amway. One restaurant I worked for in the early 1980s, at a staff meeting we were told never to knock competitors. I agree. A very cheap tactic. A housemate at the time, had been duped and that is exactly what he used.
if the universe, if its even a 'the', had some hard absolute edge, then you could say somewhere it would have a geographic/geometric center, but there is no indication of of such a sharply defined edge existing. that would also not be the meaning of center implied by the context of this thread. (also re reading what i actually said, no where was it that it didn't or couldn't have one, but rather that it didn't NEED any. just as it doesn't NEED us. i mean lots of things can exist without being needed to. that's something we need to figure out as a species, that whether our existence is common or a fluke, nothing depends upon our species existing other then our/its, self.) at any rate, the phrase 'christain complany' is what used to be called an oxymoron. and you can substitute the name of any other religion in its place and still get the same quotient.
Personally I think TV adverts tend to toxify the mind. They're often designed to appeal more to the sub-conscious, and have a way of getting in and sticking. These days I rarely see TV ads. I intend to keep it that way.
Some years ago after my old man read article after another in The Guardian about AGW he was sent a bit of personally addressed junk mail asking if he wanted to purchase a solar hot water system. Being fully brainwashed by this time, without doing any shopping around he just got the cheque book out and ordered one. He paid twice as much as one as a professionally built one for Australia when I got to see it I could not believe it was mounted in a east ward direction. By that time the company had gone into receivership and no remedial action could be taken except at my parents' expense. I realized then that when you buy a newspaper you are nor only paying for the privilege of reading advertisements, but many of the articles themselves are advertisements. Journalism can be an honorable profession, but generally speaking it is not. If I could have my life over again I would far less newspapers and more good books.
I see a problem very similar with my old mother. She's of a generation (born 1935) that placed all their trust in the media - TV and newspapers. Sometimes I feel that she regards what they print or say as some kind of 'received' truth. If a reviewer in the Daily Mail says a product is good, or a film is bad, she'll inevitably go with that, even though many products and films she's bought on the advice of journalists turn out to be no good. She had a similar experience to what you describe with double glazing - got it done based on a newspaper ad, the firm and their insurers then went bust and now she's left with a faulty window and no insurance cover. Like your old man she went for the first option based on the advertising and didn't bother to check out any other firms. I think there's a deeper issue here - it comes down to what Aldous Huxley described as 'the critical or non-critical reception of culture'. Many people accept what their favourite media outlet says or advertises with no filters. They simply accept it in what is really a un-questioning and gullible way. If it was just shopping it wouldn't be so bad, but as we know, political parties, and indeed, newspapers with a political agenda to advance use the exact same techniques to get to people.
Very true. There is also the aspect of Anchor Bias. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchoring This is what Amway relies on to brainwash their victims, I have known many people who have attended university and still get caught with /Anchor Bias,
Interesting. Thanks for posting. I think probably we're all subject to this effect to some degree. Also maybe there's a kind of conceit or arrogance that slips in where people just won't admit they have been wrong. With religion in general, many people never look further than what they were introduced to as a child. So if they're subjected to the 'Jesus died for you' type indoctrination at a young age, it will affect their decision making process for life. And I would argue, create a certain bias in terms of the way they view life in general - a miserable process where suffering is good for you because basically you're no good. University education only really works on the intellect. It certainly doesn't give people much insight into the quirks of their own psychology.
The last time my parents visited me in Australia, when they got here Dad started tearing his hair out because I was doing he unthinkable. I was getting a car ready to drive them around in. In retrospect I think he might have been autistic.This would have facilitated him being brainwashed from reading The Guardian. One of my sisters a few years ago was working as a sub-editor for Rupert and one Monday morning out of the blue she found herself redundant. So she took early retirement.When I visited her last I could not see a single newspaper in the whole house , not even a local. I guess she was over the whole business.
