The Reluctant Messiah: Raj Patel
Believe it or not, I ran across three different things yesterday that all involve people being treated as though they were God/gods. A little strange, particularly since we’re about to enter Easter weekend.
First up via BoingBoing is Raj Patel, author of “The Value of Nothing”. After appearing on TV to promote his new book, he started to get a great deal of attention… but for all the wrong reasons.
More info and context is available in this Guardian article. Messiah stuff aside, Patel is an incredibly well-spoken academic, who has an interesting take on free market economics. I’m the last person you want to be talking economics or financial stuff with, so maybe listening to his own words will give you a taste of his writing:
Next up is Steven Cooper, Hindu god. Here’s a snippet from the article:
Overall, it seems like everyone involved is happy. All’s well that ends well?
And finally, I happened across an old, old bookmark of mine that pointed me to a documentary entitled “The End of the World Cult.” I keep forgetting that I can actually load up videos on my iPhone, and so I ended up watching this on my commute home.
The documentary focuses on Wayne Bent, who claims that God told him “You are the Messiah” in June of 2000. Since that time, he’s gathered a community of followers in Union County, New Mexico and goes by the name Michael Travesser. The original 80 members of the community have dwindled down to 50.
Originally, the filmmakers investigated the cult based on concerns of suicide, as Wayne Bent predicted the end of the world at midnight, October 31, 2007. During the subsequent filming, there were revelations of Bent having sex with his son’s wife (through God’s instructions), and also accusations of Bent laying naked with underage girls of the cult.
I used to have a fascination with “end of the world” mythologies. I was interested in the notion of Fin de Siecle as an undergraduate, and was interested in the end of the world as a subject for poems, in graduate school.
I watched this documentary initially with a sense of morbid fascination. And in the end, it just ended up being really sad and depressing. Sorry to leave things on a bit of a downer. The audio gets off sync towards the middle, but I ended up not being able to stop watching – that whole car accident thing, and not being able to look away.
Attention !!!Raj Patel could be the false messiah or the false prophet.To all Christians read the 2. Thessalonians Chapter 2.The rapture of Jesus Christ is coming soon.Here are the links:
miry (April 1, 2010 at 2:29 am)http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/267526/march-15-2010/i-can-t-believe-it-s-not-buddha—raj-patelhttp://www.share-international.org/
Benjamin Creme’s information is very interesting, and i hope that he’s right.http://www.Share-International.org to read Creme’s material Maitreya.People shouldn’t let the fundamentalist Christians scare them with their talk of an anti-christ and such. One should bear in mind that they also believe that most people on earth who aren’t fundamentalist christians (that’s about 6.5 billion out of ~6.8 billion) will be sent to hell for all eternity by their angry, unjust & whimsical “God”. Thank goodness most Christians are not fundamentalist fanatics. Most of them are much more broadminded and reasonable.”To some degree Satanism is purely a kind of disease of Christianity.You’ve got to really be Christian to believe in Satan.”Alan Moore”The teachings of Jesus have come to us mutilated, misstated & unintelligible…The Christian God is a being of terrific character – cruel, vindictive, capricious, & unjust.Christianity is the most perverted system that ever shone on man.” Thomas JeffersonIt’s interesting to note that Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus – all recognize Jesus as a divine prophet and unlike fundamentalist Christians, they see their religions as one of the many paths that lead to the divine.
Toby (April 2, 2010 at 5:29 pm)