About

Born and raised in Salinas, California – land of John Steinbeck – lived and loved much and family still lives in and around the Monterey Peninsula, Carmel and in the mountains near Yosemite National Park. Won the Veterans of Foreign Wars speechwriting contest for Salinas High School in 1979 and the tri-county area that included Monterey, Santa Clara and Merced Counties.
Moved to Southwest Texas at age 35. I personally experience the culture wars between North and South, West and Midwest almost every day. Current job has taken me to Washington, DC and its suburbs many times a year.
Information Technology Developer, Analyst and writer in and for a variety of procedural languages, C# and Java. Versed in waterfall, Agile and Iterative methodologies in educational testing, finance, printing, data processing and aerospace industries. Presently employed at the Department of Treasury and working to build the IT infrastructure to roll out ObamaCare in the Fall of 2013.
Experienced rider of Honda motorcycles since 2006 with knowledge of the rides throughout the Texas Hill Country and the unique people and cultures found there.
Experienced user of a number of PTSD survival and reconciliation techniques and therapies, and am on a personal journey of processing the childhood trauma caused by alcoholism, moderate OCD and severe mental illness culminating in psychosis and its efffects on family and extended family throughout childhood and into adult years.
Member in good standing of Twelve Step fellowships for over two decades and have been clean and sober for over 22 years. I understand the recovery process and the challenges associated with chemical dependency and personal transformation.
Intermediate player of the acoustic guitar since the age of 8. If I practiced more, I would be better, but I can’t find enough time away from my other obsessions.
Graduate studies in New Media and Communication nearly complete with focus on the rhetorical study of webpage content advised by scholars like Phillip Wander, Sonja Foss and Edmund Husserl.
Student of A Course in Miracles studying under the works of Kenneth Wapnick, Marianne Williamson, Deepak Chopra and Amy Torres.
Received Bachelor’s degree in Information Systems Management from University of San Francisco in May, 1993 with upper division credit in religion received for several essays written in the areas of religion, religious experience, spirituality and spiritual development in religious community.
Received Associate’s degree in Computer Science in 1985 from Hartnell College, Salinas, California and am an alma mater of California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, California.
Married to wife B since 1997 and am helping to raise a step-grandchild, C, with her because of the effects of chemical addiction on C’s father and Bs entire family in north Texas.

GANDHI’S SEVEN ROOT CAUSES
Knowing More About Jesus Than Pope Benedict
Dr. Gerry Lower, April 26, 2009

Several essays have emerged pointing to the existence of what can be referred to as an “East-West synthesis”, an effort to find common ground in values between eastern and western cultures, in the interest of a global human-rights based democracy (1-3).

One self-evident problem with western religious legalism is that all of the guidance it offers to the people is in the form of negatives. Do not do this, do not do that, or you will be subject to the wrath and punishment of a vengeful, vindictive God, as carried out by God’s vengeful spokesmen on earth.

Without faithful believers willing and able to behave just like JudeoRomanism’s vengeful God, that supernatural god would have no power whatsoever on earth, simple as that.

In the Mosaic Decalogue, which stands as something of a monument to shallow thought in the interest of maintaining the societal status quo, there is not one word about how we ought behave, in the interest of justice and fairness or in the interest of spiritual maturation.

That door has been traditionally kept closed to allow the rich and powerful a place to hide and do unto others as they damned well please. The result of this approach has been to put control in the hands of the religious rich, at the expense of the People, a fact which motivated the American Revolution against the European church-states employing religious coercion to exploit the American colonies.

Sin, in the western world, was to go against God’s laws, laws that told one what NOT to do. One had to be either obedient to law or suffer the consequences, or one had to be willing to lie through one’s teeth in order to cover one’s ass. The enlistment of negative religious law to control human behavior has likely caused more lying in the JudeoRoman western world than any other single factor, and to a greater extent than any other human culture.

But then the western religious approach began with the lie of supernatural, external authority so as to keep the people from looking to reality for the causes of their problems.

In the JudeoRoman world, there was no religious sin, however, in failing to honor the ethical precepts of nascent Christianity. That is one of the more obvious differences between nascent Christianity and the JudeoRoman church which the Roman emperor, Constantine, established in the name of Christ.

Rome’s unholy synthesis of Christian ethics and Jewish (God-given) and Roman (Imperial) law provided Rome the absolutist, self-righteous authority to conquer the western world in the name of an ethical morality which it seldom, itself, practiced, least of all at the top.

Rather, JudeoRomanism has provided the driving attitudes beneath western imperialism, colonialism and the current Bush administration’s religious capitalism. The western world remains Roman after all these years, still Catholic despite the Lutheran and myriad Protestant Reformations.

In contrast, nascent Christianity has, from the beginning, stipulated a positive ethos, an ethical morality to guide human behavior, e.g., love of empathy toward one’s fellow man, compassion in thought and action, and forgiveness as the only intelligent solution to vengeance-based cycles of violence.

So sure was Jesus that we all live in the same world, nascent Christianity asks only that we think for ourselves, it being implicit that there is only One World, One Earth, One People, One Mind, the Human Mind. We must use it to comprehend the dark side of vengeance-based moralities, absolute legalism and penalism, and marketplace pragmatism.

Gandhi could take this inclusive Christian ethos no further, since it already resided firmly on dialectic human ground. But he did achieve an east-west synthesis by addressing the causes of social unfairness and injustice.

Gandhi provided the people, for the first time, with an earth bound place to look for the roots of their problems, as opposed to having the rich top assign them to a lack of law and order and blame the poor bottom for a lack of obedience.

In contrast to the Mosaic Decalogue of negatives, Gandhi provided seven root causes of unfairness and injustice, all consisting of volitional human activities in the absence of socially-redeeming moral content.

Gandhi’s Seven Root Causes

Wealth without Work

Pleasure without Conscience

Knowledge without Character

Commerce without Morality

Science without Humanity

Worship without Sacrifice

Politics without Principles

Here, Gandhi, speaking from the ethical east, is pointing out that most human activities are honest and just only if they are assigned a moral qualifier aimed at preserving, not law, but Christian ethics.

Insofar as these moral qualifiers are not honored in human societies, we can expect to find social pathology, e.g., corruption, exploitation, and despotism. Welcome to George W. Bush’s world of psychotic Old Testament capitalism.

Indeed, America under the auspices of Bush’s religious crony corporate capitalism can not claim to honor a single one of the dialectic (moral cum ethical) principles set forth by Gandhi. Rather, Gandhi’s root causes of human misery fairly well describes the Bush administration’s mindless, despotic policies and approaches in it’s quest to fulfill religious prophecy.

The global religious machinations of the Bush administration have no ethical content and no moral content, only absolutist legal content aimed at furthering neoconservative dominion. Gandhi’s moral qualifiers, being based upon dialectic human values, are entirely Christian in content and scope. They constitute an East-West synthesis, birthed from human Reason.

They have no place in Bush’s JudeoRoman view of the world. They do, however, have a clear role in helping the people think for themselves in identifying the roots of their problems. They do have a central role in maintaining a government “of, by and for the people.” They do have a central role in the nourishment and maintenance of a global democracy.

America under the Cheney-Bush administration has fulfilled Dennis Diderot’s worst nightmares of a “thoroughly wretched world”, a world devoid of reason, where the people “feel guilty when doing nothing wrong, and proud of themselves in the midst of sin.”

This, in Diderot’s considered philosophy, was the hallmark of religious despotism. Welcome to the neoconservative world of Bill Krystol, Dick Cheney and George W. Bush. Some American people continue to buy it, now they will have the dubious opportunity to eat it, in its entirety.

We ought be reminding ourselves that our founding fathers believed none of this bllshit. We ought be reminding ourselves that belief in this crap has never done any one any good. We ought be reminding ourselves that religion was the single largest obstacle to the emergence of human rights and democracy in this world. We ought be getting our shit together, ought we not?

Come on People. Jesus is the Father of Human Rights, Jefferson is the Father of America Democracy, based on those human rights. What the freak is your problem? Screw Rome and everything Roman. You will never regret it, because Rome is about to screw itself right out of the human program.

See the nascent Christian light in the work of Gandhi, my friends. There is only one Christ, and Gandhi walked in those very footsteps, as did Thomas Jefferson. Believe it. What else would you propose to be more worthy of human belief?

Certainly not the psychotic ramblings of Pope Benedict or our own anti-Christ, Dick Cheney. Neither knows anything of the Christ. They are both more interested in exorcism as a “christian” approach to justice in the sorry ass world that is Rome’s creation.

READINGS

1) Jesus, Jefferson and American Human Rights
Dr. Gerry Lower, Smirking Chimp, March 3, 2007
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/5843

2) East is West and West is East –
The Twain Has Long Since Met
Dr. Gerry Lower, Smirking Chimp, January 21, 2007
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/4917

3) Shutting Out the Sun No More –
A Japanese East-West Synthesis
Dr. Gerry Lower, Smirking Chimp, December 21, 2007
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/4330

4) Jefferson’s God in “The Will of the People” –
Defining Jefferson’s American Theology
Dr. Gerry Lower, Smirking Chimp, November 27, 2007
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/11250

5) Gandhi’s Seven Root Causes –
An East-West Dialectic Synthesis
Dr. Gerry Lower, OpEd News, 2003 (original post)
http://www.opednews.com/Lower_gandhi.htm

———————————————————–

6 thoughts on “About”

Dr. Gerry Lower says:

April 26, 2009 at 3:22 pm

GANDHI’S SEVEN ROOT CAUSES
Knowing More About Jesus Than Pope Benedict
Dr. Gerry Lower, April 26, 2009

Several essays have emerged pointing to the existence of what can be referred to as an “East-West synthesis”, an effort to find common ground in values between eastern and western cultures, in the interest of a global human-rights based democracy (1-3).

One self-evident problem with western religious legalism is that all of the guidance it offers to the people is in the form of negatives. Do not do this, do not do that, or you will be subject to the wrath and punishment of a vengeful, vindictive God, as carried out by God’s vengeful spokesmen on earth.

Without faithful believers willing and able to behave just like JudeoRomanism’s vengeful God, that supernatural god would have no power whatsoever on earth, simple as that.

In the Mosaic Decalogue, which stands as something of a monument to shallow thought in the interest of maintaining the societal status quo, there is not one word about how we ought behave, in the interest of justice and fairness or in the interest of spiritual maturation.

That door has been traditionally kept closed to allow the rich and powerful a place to hide and do unto others as they damned well please. The result of this approach has been to put control in the hands of the religious rich, at the expense of the People, a fact which motivated the American Revolution against the European church-states employing religious coercion to exploit the American colonies.

Sin, in the western world, was to go against God’s laws, laws that told one what NOT to do. One had to be either obedient to law or suffer the consequences, or one had to be willing to lie through one’s teeth in order to cover one’s ass. The enlistment of negative religious law to control human behavior has likely caused more lying in the JudeoRoman western world than any other single factor, and to a greater extent than any other human culture.

But then the western religious approach began with the lie of supernatural, external authority so as to keep the people from looking to reality for the causes of their problems.

In the JudeoRoman world, there was no religious sin, however, in failing to honor the ethical precepts of nascent Christianity. That is one of the more obvious differences between nascent Christianity and the JudeoRoman church which the Roman emperor, Constantine, established in the name of Christ.

Rome’s unholy synthesis of Christian ethics and Jewish (God-given) and Roman (Imperial) law provided Rome the absolutist, self-righteous authority to conquer the western world in the name of an ethical morality which it seldom, itself, practiced, least of all at the top.

Rather, JudeoRomanism has provided the driving attitudes beneath western imperialism, colonialism and the current Bush administration’s religious capitalism. The western world remains Roman after all these years, still Catholic despite the Lutheran and myriad Protestant Reformations.

In contrast, nascent Christianity has, from the beginning, stipulated a positive ethos, an ethical morality to guide human behavior, e.g., love of empathy toward one’s fellow man, compassion in thought and action, and forgiveness as the only intelligent solution to vengeance-based cycles of violence.

So sure was Jesus that we all live in the same world, nascent Christianity asks only that we think for ourselves, it being implicit that there is only One World, One Earth, One People, One Mind, the Human Mind. We must use it to comprehend the dark side of vengeance-based moralities, absolute legalism and penalism, and marketplace pragmatism.

Gandhi could take this inclusive Christian ethos no further, since it already resided firmly on dialectic human ground. But he did achieve an east-west synthesis by addressing the causes of social unfairness and injustice.

Gandhi provided the people, for the first time, with an earth bound place to look for the roots of their problems, as opposed to having the rich top assign them to a lack of law and order and blame the poor bottom for a lack of obedience.

In contrast to the Mosaic Decalogue of negatives, Gandhi provided seven root causes of unfairness and injustice, all consisting of volitional human activities in the absence of socially-redeeming moral content.

Gandhi’s Seven Root Causes

Wealth without Work

Pleasure without Conscience

Knowledge without Character

Commerce without Morality

Science without Humanity

Worship without Sacrifice

Politics without Principles

Here, Gandhi, speaking from the ethical east, is pointing out that most human activities are honest and just only if they are assigned a moral qualifier aimed at preserving, not law, but Christian ethics.

Insofar as these moral qualifiers are not honored in human societies, we can expect to find social pathology, e.g., corruption, exploitation, and despotism. Welcome to George W. Bush’s world of psychotic Old Testament capitalism.

Indeed, America under the auspices of Bush’s religious crony corporate capitalism can not claim to honor a single one of the dialectic (moral cum ethical) principles set forth by Gandhi. Rather, Gandhi’s root causes of human misery fairly well describes the Bush administration’s mindless, despotic policies and approaches in it’s quest to fulfill religious prophecy.

The global religious machinations of the Bush administration have no ethical content and no moral content, only absolutist legal content aimed at furthering neoconservative dominion. Gandhi’s moral qualifiers, being based upon dialectic human values, are entirely Christian in content and scope. They constitute an East-West synthesis, birthed from human Reason.

They have no place in Bush’s JudeoRoman view of the world. They do, however, have a clear role in helping the people think for themselves in identifying the roots of their problems. They do have a central role in maintaining a government “of, by and for the people.” They do have a central role in the nourishment and maintenance of a global democracy.

America under the Cheney-Bush administration has fulfilled Dennis Diderot’s worst nightmares of a “thoroughly wretched world”, a world devoid of reason, where the people “feel guilty when doing nothing wrong, and proud of themselves in the midst of sin.”

This, in Diderot’s considered philosophy, was the hallmark of religious despotism. Welcome to the neoconservative world of Bill Krystol, Dick Cheney and George W. Bush. Some American people continue to buy it, now they will have the dubious opportunity to eat it, in its entirety.

We ought be reminding ourselves that our founding fathers believed none of this bllshit. We ought be reminding ourselves that belief in this crap has never done any one any good. We ought be reminding ourselves that religion was the single largest obstacle to the emergence of human rights and democracy in this world. We ought be getting our shit together, ought we not?

Come on People. Jesus is the Father of Human Rights, Jefferson is the Father of America Democracy, based on those human rights. What the freak is your problem? Screw Rome and everything Roman. You will never regret it, because Rome is about to screw itself right out of the human program.

See the nascent Christian light in the work of Gandhi, my friends. There is only one Christ, and Gandhi walked in those very footsteps, as did Thomas Jefferson. Believe it. What else would you propose to be more worthy of human belief?

Certainly not the psychotic ramblings of Pope Benedict or our own anti-Christ, Dick Cheney. Neither knows anything of the Christ. They are both more interested in exorcism as a “christian” approach to justice in the sorry ass world that is Rome’s creation.

READINGS

1) Jesus, Jefferson and American Human Rights
Dr. Gerry Lower, Smirking Chimp, March 3, 2007
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/5843

2) East is West and West is East –
The Twain Has Long Since Met
Dr. Gerry Lower, Smirking Chimp, January 21, 2007
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/4917

3) Shutting Out the Sun No More –
A Japanese East-West Synthesis
Dr. Gerry Lower, Smirking Chimp, December 21, 2007
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/4330

4) Jefferson’s God in “The Will of the People” –
Defining Jefferson’s American Theology
Dr. Gerry Lower, Smirking Chimp, November 27, 2007
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/11250

5) Gandhi’s Seven Root Causes –
An East-West Dialectic Synthesis
Dr. Gerry Lower, OpEd News, 2003 (original post)
http://www.opednews.com/Lower_gandhi.htm

———————————————————–

- volaar says:
  
  April 27, 2009 at 2:11 am
  
  I would just add that the Mosaic decalogue is actually a subset of the Egyptian Book of the Dead and the point of these “top ten” commandments is that, in ultimate reality, they cannot be violated. In mundane experience they are, of course, broken all the time, but the truth the lies beneath them should not be underestimated.
  
  If you want to hide the truth from anyone, just bury it in a bunch of Christian dogma and no one will ever find it, much less know what it means.
  
laudyms says:

May 23, 2019 at 6:41 pm

Hi Richard- was looking for Rady who seems to be missing since 2014, and found you again at Coto2. Do miss your ramblings some too. Hope all is well.
Claudia

- volaar says:
  
  May 24, 2019 at 2:55 am
  
  Wow. I think she did write some for Rob at OEN. But I haven’t scribbled much since 2010. My guess is she probably got a girlfriend and moved down South. I think that’s what I would have done.
  
- volaar says:
  
  March 29, 2023 at 12:42 am
  
  Did you ever find Rady??
  
  - laudyms says:
    
    April 16, 2023 at 7:21 pm
    
    your website seems to be down? No I never found anymore references to Rady, tho it’s been awhile since I looked. Hope all is well with you? Claudia