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| Gemini created this image that captures so much of the joys of the aisle seat. |
The post below was a comment to the excellent Please Return To Your Seat essay on Substack by Scot Monaco. IT IS A FUNNY, so hold off with the brandished crucifixes and angry martyrs OK? Because why I have long overpaid my dues as former lay youth pastor and have doubly earned the right to douse in a heavy sense of humour any belief system.
That airports and flying have become a hell-lite experience, is mostly the fault of faithfull Catholics and Islamists (and a few Judaists). Stay with me now -- for quantum physics and faith systems are about to mix and birth a postulate in public.
First, countless Abrahamic faithful believe in Limbo, al-A'raf and Gehanna -- that cosy foyer to Hell where all the unbabtised babies and disullisioned grannies and all the other not-totally-holy-but-also-not-really-bad people go to await their family raising enough money to afford an indulgence, or suffer long enough to free their souls.
Things went well for centuries, until in 2001, the first pothole in the way of this happy applecart happened -- we call it 9/11. Thence, performative security became a thing, killing off the tiny bit of joy that flying still held back then.
Meanwhile, in 2004, the indie film "What The Bleep Do We Know" started showing, telling more and more of us that quantum physics is basically us creating reality with our thoughts. To date, >100 million+ have learned this.
Then in Jan 2009, Pope Benedict the 16th formalised the International Theological Commission's thinking that there ain't no limbo no moh. Not many in the Abrahamic faith systems took notice until, presumably, they died, shrugged of this tent body and suddenly went straight up, (seldom) or down, (most of us).
No more analogue choices with a toasty foyer in between the hot and the cool place. It was a binary situation of up or down. Picture the winged guides yelling "There you go! Keep it moving. Next!"
Yeah. Thanks for nothing, Pope B the XVIth.
Then in 2011 WEF thought leader and history professor Yuval Harari added fuel to the quantum fire, by publishing Homo Sapiens, which shows how our beliefs in any fiction we can dream up, became our realities. This thinking sold to >46 million+ in 65 languages.
...and all this time, increasing numbers of Islamists, Catholics Judiast, Zionists and all the many other branches that broke off from the main tree to grow new roots with the same genes, well, we started really missing our purgatory man!
We were all down for there to be a place where those of us who were never really that bad or good, could go do to a little bit of penance for all our bad decisions before going up to get measured for a harp / crown of life.
So when Pope B the XVI-nth went and gone done took limbo all from us all, billions of minds who wanted, nay, NEEDED to believe that a purgatory should exist on the outer circles of Hell, well, we gone went right ahead and done create it. With our thoughts. Here, on Earth.
This new limbo thought creation is not exactly a "Lose Hope All Ye Who Enter" kinda place (that sign is for the Unclaimed Luggage hall) but one where we all get to do a bit of bored-out-of-your-mind time* to rue the life choices that got us here, but with a modernised fee structure (and traveller miles for the very faithful) that we can use, after sufficient repentance, to buy our freedom and soar up to the Heavens.
That quantum creative force of billions of faithful yearnings for a modern hell-lite was what got us today's not-quite-but-almost-hellish place of departure.
This force manifested in a grim reality that took the worst of modern archictectual statements and mixed it with the best that surcharges, crying babies, overbookings, metal detectors and no liquids pass this point had to offer -- we call it International Departures or Connecting Flights.
I could go on, but as the priest said, 'res ipsa loquitur'.
___
Meanwhile, in 2004, the indie film "What The Bleep Do We Know" started showing, telling more and more of us that quantum physics is basically us creating reality with our thoughts. To date, >100 million+ have learned this.
Then in Jan 2009, Pope Benedict the 16th formalised the International Theological Commission's thinking that there ain't no limbo no moh. Not many in the Abrahamic faith systems took notice until, presumably, they died, shrugged of this tent body and suddenly went straight up, (seldom) or down, (most of us).
No more analogue choices with a toasty foyer in between the hot and the cool place. It was a binary situation of up or down. Picture the winged guides yelling "There you go! Keep it moving. Next!"
Yeah. Thanks for nothing, Pope B the XVIth.
Then in 2011 WEF thought leader and history professor Yuval Harari added fuel to the quantum fire, by publishing Homo Sapiens, which shows how our beliefs in any fiction we can dream up, became our realities. This thinking sold to >46 million+ in 65 languages.
...and all this time, increasing numbers of Islamists, Catholics Judiast, Zionists and all the many other branches that broke off from the main tree to grow new roots with the same genes, well, we started really missing our purgatory man!
We were all down for there to be a place where those of us who were never really that bad or good, could go do to a little bit of penance for all our bad decisions before going up to get measured for a harp / crown of life.
So when Pope B the XVI-nth went and gone done took limbo all from us all, billions of minds who wanted, nay, NEEDED to believe that a purgatory should exist on the outer circles of Hell, well, we gone went right ahead and done create it. With our thoughts. Here, on Earth.
This new limbo thought creation is not exactly a "Lose Hope All Ye Who Enter" kinda place (that sign is for the Unclaimed Luggage hall) but one where we all get to do a bit of bored-out-of-your-mind time* to rue the life choices that got us here, but with a modernised fee structure (and traveller miles for the very faithful) that we can use, after sufficient repentance, to buy our freedom and soar up to the Heavens.
That quantum creative force of billions of faithful yearnings for a modern hell-lite was what got us today's not-quite-but-almost-hellish place of departure.
This force manifested in a grim reality that took the worst of modern archictectual statements and mixed it with the best that surcharges, crying babies, overbookings, metal detectors and no liquids pass this point had to offer -- we call it International Departures or Connecting Flights.
I could go on, but as the priest said, 'res ipsa loquitur'.
___
* Boredom being humanity's biggest fear and greatest torment.
