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THE SEVENTEEN-HUNDRED-YEAR OPPRESSION OF HUMAN HAPPINESS

In document Neo Tech 114 Advantages (Page 44-48)

About 300 A.D., Christian theologians discovered the ultimate neocheating technique to control human beings. That technique was to link guilt with sex [Re: Section Four Neo-Tech Reference Encyclopedia]. With that technique, the Christian church rose to its height in power, causing Western civilization to crumble into the mystical Dark Ages as human well-being and happiness sank to the lowest level in recorded history.

The history of Christian oppression of individual life, rights, values, happiness, pleasure, and sexuality is outlined on the following pages:

CHRISTIAN OPPRESSION OF HAPPINESS (from research by Morton M. Hunt and others)

100 A.D. - 385 A.D.

Roman Empire still appeared vibrant, but was surrendering to a new religion...Christianity. Rome plunged into altruism and asceticism.

Roman pagans began persecuting those Christians who became altruistic fanatics and used any means to meet their goals of destroying the life-enhancing and productive aspects of Roman civilization. Those neocheating Christian leaders had the dual objective of wiping out the pleasures of human life as well as destroying the high standard of living enjoyed by the Romans. The early Christians heroically formed tightly-knit anarchist groups for effective protection from the oppression of the bureaucratic Roman government while laying the foundations for their own much greater oppressions.

385 A.D. - 1000 A.D.

The rise of the unkempt ascetics (hippies) in Egypt. Based on Christian self-torture and denial (e.g., St. Simon).

Christianity discovered a fast, neocheating route to power -- the foisting of guilt onto innocent value producers. As an effective rallying symbol, they found and elevated to martyr-level status an obscure historical individual who died three centuries earlier. That individual ironically was a gentle, appealing rebel who heroically stood up to the injustices of the parasitical-elite authorities -- the same type authorities who three centuries later usurped and mystified him for their own dishonest exploitation. That individual, their new symbol, was named Jesus Christ. ...Jesus has been done a rank injustice by the Catholic church.

Christians became increasingly preoccupied with sex as they struggled against lust (e.g., by burning off fingers to resist temptation).

Thinly veiled, neurotic eroticism steadily increased within the church.

St. Augustine (born 354 A.D.) promoted guilt through his books:

(1) Confessions -- self-accusations of his pagan, lustful youth. He converted to a Christian in 386 A.D., then gained power through

neocheating by hatefully using guilt to turn the goodness and pleasures of man against himself. Promulgated how all are born between feces and

urine. (2)The City of God -- his major work -- speculates how babies might be born from women "uncankered by lust and sex". Demonstrates

passionate hatred for human life. St. Augustine became a master neocheater in achieving respect and power by making problems where none existed. He destroyed values rather than create them.

By the 5th Century, marriage came under church domination.

The decline into dark ages coincided with the rise of Christianity.

Collapsing under the Christian stranglehold, 6th Century Rome was repeatedly ravaged and looted. One million population was reduced to fifty thousand. The city lay in rubble and ruins. The Senate ceased for lack of qualified men. The hygiene, science, and culture of Rome was

abandoned as Christianity took hold.

By 585 A.D., Catholics argued that women did not have mortal souls and debated if women were even human beings.

Sex was reduced by Christianity to an unromantic, harsh, ugly act with penance easily and hypocritically granted to men whenever required.

Women became pieces of disposable property.

Clergy and popes turned to prostitutes and neurotic sex. (e.g., The Pope of 904 A.D. practiced incest and was a lecher with children).

By the 9th Century, Christianity dominated. Women were considered property of men. The church sanctioned wife-beating. Men were merely fined by the church for killing women.

For the Catholic clergy, sex without values (e.g., prostitute sex, orgy sex, even forced rape or sadistic sex) was not a serious offense, but sex with values (e.g., loving or valuing a woman) was a high sin with severe penalties. For, love and valuing resist control by "authorities", therefore, had to be squelched.

St. Jerome stated that he who too ardently loved his wife was an adulterer.

Christian marital sex was performed only in one position and then only to conceive a child. Sex was never to be performed during penance nor on Sundays, Wednesdays, Fridays, holiday seasons.

The major Christian sin was not sex, but pleasure.

1000 A.D. - 1500 A.D.

Courtly love reflected happiness and contradicted the malevolence of religion. Churchmen feared and fought courtly love (e.g., St. Thomas stated that to kiss and touch a woman with delight, even without thought of fornication, was a mortal sin).

The struggle was between oppressive religion and renaissance free thinking. Also, the struggle was between papal power and the new

Aristotelian ideas.

In the 1300s, an ominous new interest in witchcraft and exorcism began appearing in the church. Priests fulminated about the evil powers of women who formed sex pacts with the Devil.

By 1450, the dichotomy was complete and the dogma was established by the Catholic church that all physically desirable women were evil witches. The church was losing its power, and demonizing women was their means to fight the rediscovering of human joyfulness brought on by the emerging Renaissance.

Renaissance noblemen in the 15th Century equated beauty to good.

To counter this trend toward good and beauty, the church attacked through the Pope. The Catholic church developed a new breed of neocheating malefactors not known before...the inquisitors who were backed by a series of papal pronouncements and bulls. The Pope set up two theologians (Jacob Sprenger and Henry Kramer) to act as inquisitors.

Sprenger and Kramer wrote a widely influential book dealing with the

"evils" of women and witchcraft. That led to the burning to death of tens of thousands of innocent women during the Renaissance.

Crosscurrents and contradictions -- the "lady ideal" projected by the happy, benevolent spirit of the Renaissance versus the "evil witch"

projected by the unhappy, malevolent spirit of the church.

King Henry VIII was the first major figure to combine love and marriage. He waged a long battle with Bishop Wolsey and Pope Clement VII about his divorce and subsequent marriage to Anne Boleyn.

Renaissance enlightenment made sex seem not so sinful and disgusting as the church insisted. The middle class began to associate sex with love.

1500 - 1700

The Reformation combined with the enlightened Renaissance by considering sex in marriage as wholesome and free of guilt. But the malevolent Christian position continued to burn women as witches.

Martin Luther battled Catholic asceticism by advocating the enjoyment of every pleasure that was not "sinful". Luther lived in a lusty

"eat, drink, and be merry" style. He fought Rome and claimed that celibacy was invented by the Devil. He insisted that priests could marry and asserted that marriage was not a sacrament at all, but a civil matter.

Luther asserted that sexual impulses were both natural and irrepressible.

He broke from Rome and married. He cheerfully loved his wife and held pleasurable sex in marriage as good. Luther's reformation rapidly spread across Northern Europe.

John Calvin (the father of the Bluenoses) was the opposite of Martin Luther. Calvin was sour, malevolent, and had a ferocious theology based on human depravity and the wrath of God. He was an unhappy ascetic who had ulcers, tuberculosis, and kidney stones; he considered life of little value. Calvin set up a brutally strict theocracy in Geneva that allowed no dancing, fancy clothes, or jewelry. The death penalty was imposed for adultery. Even legitimate love was stringently regulated.

Engagements were limited to six weeks. No lingering at romance was allowed. Weddings were grave with no revelry. The Calvinist marriage had two functions: (1) to produce children, and (2) to reduce sexual desires.

Most Puritans, however, were quite unlike the inhuman joylessness of Calvin. But a few vocal fanatics such as John Knox in the United States continued to pile misery onto others. His Blue laws of the 1650s were against amusements, smoking, drinking, gambling, fancy clothing. He also promoted public whippings, scarlet letters, executions for adulterers, and the Salem "witch" executions (executed 26 women and two dogs in 1692).

Early Puritan traits were mainly stern expressions masking

mischief and romance. Church trial records show much "sinning" existed.

But only sex outside marriage was attacked. Puritans were very much for sex inside marriage and condemned the virtue-of-virginity concept. Most Puritans were tenderly romantic and good lovers.

The image of the sexless Puritan with a stony heart is false. For example, the 17th Century Puritan John Milton (Paradise Lost) projected a healthy view of married sex. He displayed idealistic, romantic views about marriage. Moreover, Milton sent tracts to Parliament urging modern-day, easy divorce. Milton's Paradise Lost projects a benevolent view of Adam and Eve in a romantic-love context. Milton rejected St.

Augustine's malevolent views of life, sex, and pleasure.

16th Century Puritans combined the ideals of romantic love with the normality of sex in marriage. Woman's status improved under Puritanism (e.g., if beaten, women could separate and even divorce.).

Property rights and inheritance laws improved. Marriage became a civil contract.

1700 - 1800

The rationalists in this new Age of Reason rejected the gloom of Christianity. They scrapped the church's portrait of woman as evil.

18th Century love rejected Christian anti-sexual values and idealized the mythical Don Juan, who was impeccably mannered, lustful, haughty. Love was reduced to mere sensuality and pleasurable sport with the motive to seduce and then desert.

1800 - 1900

Religious Victorian men, on the other hand, were patriarchal and stern. But they played that role at their own sexual expense.

Out of religious Victorianism arose a great hunger for a fantasy sex life. Flagellation, pornography, and prostitution rapidly increased.

Capitalistic economics were greatly accelerating the dissolution of medieval religious ties along with their unjust social customs and racism.

The religious Victorian home was threatened by talk of female suffrage, divorce reforms, and free love.

Victorianism was a reactionary, desperate delaying action (in collusion with the church) against the inevitable changes made by an emerging industrial civilization. Religion-oriented Victorians tried to fight change via religious coercion, government force, and police activities.

1900 - 1950

Margaret Sanger staged a historic fight for birth control claiming that a woman's body belonged to her alone. She published birth-control information in 1914 and opened birth-control clinics in 1916. Outraged Roman Catholic elements had her arrested and jailed.

1950 - 1980

Modern sexual revolution toward openness and honesty has caused the church's malevolent influence over sexuality to wane. In a last

desperate effort, "modern" and new-wave churches evolved that adopted existentialist and fun views of sex in order to diminish the value and importance of sex. Thus, those churches kept control by undercutting people's self-esteem. Without self-esteem, one cannot experience abiding happiness or psychuous pleasures. Without self-esteem, a person will continue to be controlled by neocheaters using the tools of mysticism.

1980 - PRESENT

An ominous rise of overt mysticism, born-again Christianity, and fundamentalist religions signal a turn back toward malevolent views of life, love, and sex. A revival of fundamentalism and theocratic concepts are conditions ultimately sought by all mystical leaders. No matter what deceptive facades they present, all mystical leaders are destructive neocheaters who ultimately want to reign with murderous power. But today, for the first time in history, mysticism and neocheating are being irreversibly undermined by the spreading Neo-Tech matrix.

Neo-Tech Advantage #34

In document Neo Tech 114 Advantages (Page 44-48)