The Plumed Serpent (Material to Bridge from Previous Parts)
Earlier, I deferred expansion on the Google definition of Cult regarding, “relatively small group” or “strange” or “sinister?”
If I started a religion and I called it the Religion of the Plumed Serpent and included virgin sacrifices, I’m sure I would be labeled a cult leader, a deviant, and a criminal. But if I could build my following to include enough members to rank as a proper religion what would that number be? 100 is probably too few. Even 1,000 is probably too few.
What if it covered the whole state of Texas with a membership of 29 million? What if it covered an area that exceeded the land mass covered by Judiasm, Shintoism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity, or Islam? Would it be considered mainstream and not be maligned as a cult of deviant behavior?
800 years ago, the Religion of the Plumed Serpent was the largest religion on earth and its sacred temples (Place of the Seven Grottos) were in Trinity County, Texas. 1200 years before this, the area where part of Lake Livingston now sits, was home to the Aztecs, the Toltecs, and the Mayans.
[It is this exact area that La Raza (a cult, of course) and others reference in their demands for open borders, except that their fabled sacred homeland (Aztlán) is not a fable and not the entirety of North America as they seem to claim. Apparently, they are unaware of the finiteness of Aztlán.]
For hundreds of years before this, these three tribes cohabited. And although the Mayans are revered today as those of the Yucatan who had technological superiority in astronomy, metallurgy, stone hewing, and time-keeping (calendar) technology, they actually acquired this knowledge from the Aztecs and Toltecs many centuries earlier in what would centuries later would be known as a county in Texas.
You see, the Mayans were actually the last kid on the block, so to speak, to get the information. They were the Johnny-come-lately. They had migrated from the east to join the other two tribes, because they desired the technological enlightenment, but were simultaneously hesitant about the human sacrifices that were demanded by the Plumed Serpent. So they took the trade-off of bad and deviant behavior of the other two tribes for the benefit of the technology.
About 400 BC, the lake which enabled the tribes to navigate to their temples and other holy sites partially drained due to drought. The Mayan, then, checked out and moved to the Yucatan. With successive droughts at 400 AD and 1100 AD the Toltecs, then the Aztecs, migrated to the Central Valley of Mexico.
One Man’s Cult is Another Man’s Religion (New Material)
Earlier, I wrote that I had responded to my Fox Tampa interviewer with,
Our forefathers from Europe fled oppression for their beliefs and came here and settled in various enclaves. Collectively and eventually, they formed a country promoting freedom of belief and speech. The United States is basically a collection of cults, and this is a major reason to be proud to be a citizen here.
It’s easy to fall prey, as I did in the original version of Cult Bashing, to say that,
Our forefathers from Europe fled oppression for their beliefs and came here and settled in various enclaves to eventually form a country promoting freedom of belief and speech.
These cults did not come here to form anything but a place so that they could impose a form of religious tyranny at least if not more tyrannical than the ones they fled in Europe. Indeed, there was no purpose intended toward religious freedom in most cases, if any.
Note the Tolerance Act of 1649. This was only 29 years after the landing at Plymouth by the Pilgrims. Most of the enclaves of the other cults were settled after 1620, hence had been settled for even less time.
I suppose that the Tolerance Act might represent the notion that, “Look boys, we’re struggling here with the Indians, starving to death, enduring the harsh winters and the threat of disease. Perhaps our survival chances would be better if we didn’t kill each other over religion. Truce. Two exceptions: Jews and atheists.”
The Tolerance Act went back and forth several times and was eventually and permanently repealed in 1689, at least until the United States Constitution included its original amendments.
Pre-Covid, I was a professional trumpet player who specializes in church music. I have performed in as many as five different services in three different denominational churches on the same day. I usually used one particular church as my base of operations with an understanding that I will float around to the needs of other churches as the demand and schedule permit.
If I maintained the same church as my base, I usually got to know the politics of that church. Anyone with ears and eyes realizes what a hotbed of dissent that often exists just below the surface of the niceties of the church membership that can erupt like a volcano to destroy it.
It seems that a church (any church) is like an ovary with bursting follicles that is incessantly casting off newly generated ova, spawning breakaway churches that increase geometrically in number (With ever-decreasing memberships in current day). The justification for the breakaway groups vary tremendously, but it is often based on biblical interpretation. In this case, the dominant church (usually a larger and older cult) is the prevailing (orthodox) interpretation of the scriptures while the breakaway (usually a smaller and newer cult) are the deviants (unorthodox).
Another Epiphany
If I, Ken, take a narrow view of our society, I am not a bigot; however, I might scorn the Branch Davidians, Jim Jones and his Jonestown, as well as those religious sects that worship by dancing with poisonous snakes. Therefore I must admit to being a conditional bigot. After all and otherwise, I am cool with all the major religions and races in this country.
But if I expand my horizons to include all of present humanity as well as to admit that tolerance is ideally unconditional, I might openly condemn the cannibalistic practices of a New Guinea tribe or the virgin sacrifices of another tribe in some other remote locale.
And if I expand my horizons temporally rather than just geographically, I might consider disgusting the ancient Spartans who sent their boys at reaching the age of seven away from their mothers to live in a homosexual bivouac. Taken in this broader context, my intolerance with these practices and their belief systems makes me a bigot.
Approximately 20 years ago, a friend and computer engineer once proclaimed to me that he was a “mainframe bigot.” I laughed and asked, “What do you mean by that?” He replied that part of his job in his company was to enable the desktop personal computer users to interface with the company’s mainframe computer. At that time, there were many different PC manufacturers various (Pet, Commodore, IBM-PC, TRS-80-Radio Shack, etc.) requiring differing interfaces. Apparently this frustrated his primary focus of doing mainframe maintenance.
Another friend and practicing attorney told me that he once took several business courses from an instructor who was fond of using the phrase, “selective tolerance.” At any opportune moment the instructor would utter the phrase under his breath in a clever, but cynical manner.
We both mused that, “So that’s what we are when we consider ourselves to be purely tolerant,... we’re selectively tolerant…hmm?” Reciprocally speaking, we are therefore, as stated before, conditional bigots.
By the way, the origin of bigot, literally means by God. [At least, I have found this etymology in one reference, but conflicting in others.]
The Resulting Problem with Total Tolerance
If I, Ken Hutchins, on the other hand, am totally tolerant—if I can openly accept without criticism all the practices and attitudes of the world—past and present—then and only then can I be labeled as completely nonbigoted and nonprejudicial. However, I am now beset with another problem: Ken Hutchins has no convictions.
I see this as a messy paradox, especially for any legal or justice system. Are laws in a society merely arbitrary? (Isn’t arbitrary the adjective form of the noun, arbitration?...Hmm?!) If not, where are the lines between practical, arbitrary, and just?