A memory that has stuck around in my head for a long time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_TcSyUIDAso

I remember when JC talks about the hut. It struck me as quite brutal. JC might have been glossy eyed talking about it as he says the sublime strikes people as well as the majestic(? can't think of the word). I don't think he condoned it but he didn't condemn it either. His point is in understanding what it is these people are getting out of it.

Whatever they get it seems there has to be better ways to get it. There was a show on the travel channel about hunter/gatherers in Papau New Guinea where the next tribe accused a man of whitchcraft so they gave him to them to be slaughtered. Its better than all out war though. Obviously from a culture with a large scientific tradition this seems silly. Yet many still believe in magic as well as ghosts, let alone a god. Today almost everyone in Jo-burg South Africa still believe in magic and thats a pretty modern metropolis.

Don't the majority of people in the USA also believe in magic? Or as most of them say "miracles"?

Which is the magic of re-naming?!
the craft of word smiths/legislators/social engineers/"priests"
Superstition becomes "Faith". Robbery becomes "taxation". Fantasia becomes "belief".
From my circle of USAmericans, yupp, a very superstitious bunch. The largest religion in The States isn't one of the Big 3, rather it is Statism, with legislation being it's Holy Book, legislators the High Priests.

I would say almost all humans believe in magic as miracles or as eye2i2 says, and most probabley more than one. That is why those huts being caved in on young couples makes sense sadly.

** I left off The U.Statist Religions "Stone Tablets" ie Ten Commandments: The CONstitution & The Bill Of Rights **
The Supreme Law Of The Land
(and all the anointed ones/priests judges wear robes and sit in high places, etc)

hey Blackacidlizzard,

I hope you're not writing this from an Afghani or Iraqi internet cafe? (how did it go with the possible redeployment?)

They probably would have taken more steps to contact me if my name had been drawn, haven't heard anything beyond the two phone calls I ignored.

Wouldn't be in the middle east in any case - a jail cell or in a stand off with the state thugs if it came to it.

Current place of residence is Texas... Hoping my ecenomic situation holds, I'm enjoying sleepng in a place that can't be towed away by the cops.

all the best to you, blackacidlizzard, in your courageous & honorable stand

Heh, one which it appears I'll never be called on.

Still, a bit more risky than deciding that I'll never submit to Martian rule, I suppose..

After I read an article in National Review (or was it New Republic?) critical of Campbell, I dismissed him as a charlatan. This was in the '80s and I no longer remember the author's reasoning.

Looks like I should give Campbell another try.