Quite a few people think sex is “just biological,” or “just physical,” or even “just chemical.” But as men and women increase their degrees of realself, they see that sex is actually linked inextricably to the realself.

Why is this? The main reason is probably that even though we can become alienated ontologically—we can fool ourselves into thinking we are who we aren’t and we aren’t who we are—we probably can’t fool our sexual nature because it is connected with the core of who we truly are, our realselves.

Most people are being mostly their socialselves, and so one might think that expressions of sex as a realself event would be rare. But one needs to keep in mind that everyone has a realself, and so when men and women have sex their realselves, to whatever degree they are being it, enters into and influences their sexual lives.

Future posts will examine in detail many of the connections between sex and the realself, but for now here is a quick overview of a few ontological areas where sex is a realself event:

• The link between sex and the realself means that sex often represents an increase in degree of realself, and so the people who on some level fear, reject, or even hate that increase will also fear, reject, or even hate sex.
• This fear, rejection, and hate is seen in religious and social conservatives preoccupation with sex: gays, gay marriage, contraceptives, abortion, and so on. It’s not sex they dislike the most, but actually the increase in degree of realself that sex represents.
• Sex and the realself can be thought of as two ends of a spectrum, and so even for those who are fully conscious of the realself, it’s hard to tell in some cases where sex ends and ontology begins and where ontology ends and sex begins.
• Men and women have both sexual desires and ontological desires, and sometimes, maybe even often, men and women have sex to satisfy their ontological desires or, but to a lesser extent, they use their ontological emotions to enhance their sexual desires.
• The pleasures of sex are partly the pleasures of becoming more one’s realself with another person, whether the people involved are conscious of this or not.
• The ontological component in sexuality covers the full range of sexuality, from its best to its worst: one man may want a sensuous blending of beings and bodies with his wife and another man shoots his girlfriend who is leaving him, later telling authorities “if I can’t have her, no one will have her” or “now I will be the only man she’s ever had sex with and we will be together for ever.”
• Intense sexual jealousy, in all its various forms, is mostly if not almost entirely an ontological emotion.

There’s no question about it: we will never understand sex until we understand realself ontology.

A minor note about the term: in realself ontology sex is described as a realself event rather than something such as a realself phenomena in order to encompass a lot of non-physical sexuality, such as what have in the past been thought of as strictly sexual fantasies or sexual desires.

It may be obvious, but in case it isn’t the main reason for this blog is to help make humankind less alienated ontologically and eventually to end our ontological alienation completely.

In working toward that goal, The Ontological War is concerned with two main groups. The first group is made up of ontological sensitive people, and the posts written for them focus on explaining everything having to do with increasing one’s degree of realself. And if these posts are looked at even closer, one will see that half of this blog is actually directed at those ontologically sensitive people who want to, or will want to, become increasing realself people.

The second group is made up of decreasing realself people, and the posts for them explain the great harm their promotion of alienated life causes all of us and explain the reasons for their having made the worst of all ontological decisions: the rejection of their realselves and realself life.

Of course, by having these two ontologically opposite audiences, there will be a wide range in the types of posts. The posts for ontologically sensitive people will include those such as in the Sex, Lies, and Videotape series. These posts will be directed mainly at increasing one’s degree of realself by showing the thoughts and emotions of others who are at various degrees of realself and then explaining why those who continue moving forward make the decisions they do.

The posts for decreasing realself people, on the other hand, will explain why they are alienated and why they made their decisions to turn around in the Transition and become more alienated rather than more who they truly are. The posts for this group will include those such as in the Jesus Is My Bitch! series, the Prof. L. Bernard Budlong Award series, and the Help! The World Is Too Big For Me! series. Besides explaining why the ontological states of decreasing realself people are alienated, a secondary purpose for these post will be to make it very difficult in the future for anyone to happily be a decreasing realself person.

In realself ontology terms, the Transition is the ontological path or road from one’s socialself to one’s realself.

Most of the time when increasing realself ideas are explained here they will be described as if people who are increasing their degrees of realself take an ontological step forward, then another, and another until they finally reach their realselves and the realself world.

But this isn’t how people actually increase their degrees of realself.

Instead, people step forward three, four, or more ontological steps, reach an elevated degree of realself that becomes too painful in some way, and then step back a step or two. By stepping back, these people return to a lower ontological state that is familiar and comfortable. Then, once they have rested and gotten used to and understand better the elevated degree of realself ahead of them, they again go forward several or more steps.

And when people again increase their degrees of realself after having rested at a lower ontological state, the previous “elevated degree of realself” that before was too painful for them now becomes just another step on their way to their realselves, and they go several or more steps beyond it before they again reach an elevated degree of realself that is, temporarily, “too much” for them.

Increasing realself people do this ebbing and flowing throughout their ontological journey, but their doing this doesn’t mean they are erratic, unstable, or inconsistent. This ontological ebbing and flowing is a normal part of our becoming who in the past we always thought was wrong but now realize is the best we will ever be; it takes time for us to adjust to this new understanding of who we really are; and we need to recognize these changes for what they are.

Elevated degrees of realself can become too painful for many reasons. To give just a few examples, on reaching an elevated degree of realself increasing realself people may feel:

• too “lost,” which is caused by their not understanding the elevated degree of realself well enough yet ontologically
• too neurotic, anxious, or depressed, all of which are caused by their becoming more what the alienated world around them, the socialself world, says is wrong but they believe is right
• too exposed ontologically, which is caused by their being more their realselves than they’ve ever been it before
• or too different, which can be caused by their not getting along with family and friends as well as they did before when they were being more their socialselves

What’s important about all of this is for people who are increasing their degrees of realself to understand what’s going on, so that when they step back to lower degrees of realself they realize that all they are doing is resting and adjusting to their recently acquired greater understanding of themselves and of life: their stepping back is not a true reversal in either their ontological direction or commitment.

Ann in Sex, Lies, and Videotape ebbed and flowed in her feelings about herself and in her feelings about Graham. More on her ontological ebbing and flowing will be in future posts.

Richard Land, the president of the Southern Baptist’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC), and Rev. C. John McCloskey III, Catholic evangelist and Opus Dei member, both hate liberals.

In an ERLC statement about its public policy battles of 2009, Land and ERLC VP Barrett Duke write:

As we predicted, we spent most of last year resisting liberal efforts to undermine biblical values. … Considering the daunting challenges we faced at the beginning of 2009, we believe traditional Judeo-Christian values won out in most cases. It is likely that we will be defending these values from liberal attacks in 2010 as well.

Rev. C. John McCloskey wrote his doctoral dissertation on John Henry Newman, “Liberalism and Newman: The Anglican Vision and Response,” but the work is really of more value for its descriptions of several of the main intellectual events in a man’s, McCloskey’s, ontological failure in his own life:

In this thesis we see Newman grappling with the same problems that afflict us today; we call it secular materialism, he, Liberalism. …

I originally planned the work as a study of the prophetical nature of Newman’s statement on Liberalism, after being struck by how well he diagnosed the situation in which modern man finds himself today after nearly two centuries of the infection of liberal ideology. …

The contribution of this work is small although in as far as I have been able to ascertain, it is original. I aim to show that Newman is one of the first to recognize religious Liberalism, based on what he would call the “non-dogmatic principle,” as a destructive force for modern society, mainly in the fact that it does not recognize the claims of objective truth.

Land and McCloskey both think they hate “liberals,” but that’s not what they truly hate. Instead, they hate increasing realself people and increase realself ideas, or more specifically, they hate everything that has anything to do with the realself.

Land and McCloskey think they are fighting a religious war, but their battle is purely ontological. To those who are a little more insightful, they might see this battle as actually an ideological battle, which is partly true, this battle is more ideological than religious. But those who are even more insightful will see that this battle is entirely an ontological battle between those who are weak and fearful ontologically and believe we desperately need to become more alienated and those who are not like that and don’t believe that.

Land says he is fighting “liberal attacks” and defending “biblical values,” but as people increase their degrees of realself they will clearly see how false, empty, and damaging these two belief are. For those who are absolutely clueless about the realself’s existence and who are terrified of increasing their degrees of realself, it’s probably pretty easy to rewrite reality into thinking that those who think we all need to become our authentic selves are “attacking us!” Likewise, it’s probably pretty easy to cherry-pick the bible to find ontologically alienated passages that one can then use to support one’s warped view of human life.

All of this is unfortunate for folks who are genuinely religious because these two men and other likes them have turned religion and religious freedom into little more than weapons to give themselves a little extra muscle in their battle to make all of us more alienated. These men have helped change religion from being something holy and sacred to being just another ideology—like thousands of others—and in this case an ideology built around a core of hypocrisy.

I will be writing more about Rev. C. John in the future. He has written enough so that it will be possible to go into some detail in describing decreasing realself people and why they believe as they do.

In an earlier post I wrote that when people meet Southern Baptists they should think in the back of their minds Danger! Danger! Alienation! Alienation! Well these people should definitely think the same thing when they meet “traditional” Catholics.

As people become more their realselves they become less alienated ontologically, and they develop a deeper and closer bond with reality and with the natural world—the life that exists other than our own. Men and women who reach this ontological state realize that the natural world is in fact their true home, and they develop what has incorrectly been called a reverence for it and all the life in it, when in fact all they have done has been to become aware of the way that people who are not alienated ontologically respond to the world of the realself: the natural world and reality.

Turning to the other side of this issue, there are many people who like to think they can pick-and-choose their alienation. But they are all wrong. If a person chooses to be alienated from anything, that person is inevitably also choosing to be alienated from everything: from his or her own realself, from the realselves of loved ones, from the realselves in all others, from life, and from reality.

One example of this multifaceted alienation is seen in a recent article on the Baptist Press: FIRST-PERSON: The $1 million tiger beetle, by columnist Kelly Boggs. In his article Boggs writes that million-dollar homes are at risk in Maryland because an endangered species, the Puritan Tiger Beetle, lives on shoreline cliffs, ocean waves are causing the cliffs to erode, and therefore the beetles are putting the houses near the tops of the cliffs in danger. To get an idea of the numbers involved, the Washington Post says ”5,000 Puritan tiger beetles are left on the planet, about 4,500 of them in Maryland.”

In his article Boggs writes

The federal government has blocked any attempt by the Maryland property owners to stop the damage because of fears it would disturb the habitat of the Puritan tiger beetle.

But according to the Washington Post, Boggs’s statement is not true:

After several years of planning with state and federal agencies, some Chesapeake Ranch Estates property owners were permitted in 2005 to install hollow concrete balls offshore to slow powerful waves hitting the cliffs.

The $200,000 project did not work, said Tony Vajda, a homeowner and primary point man for the effort.

Vajda has reapplied for a permit for a stone wall at the base of the cliffs to stop erosion. The Department of Natural Resources and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service recommended that the permit be denied and instead proposed segmented breakwaters, large rock walls placed a significant distance offshore. They suggested the same idea in 2005.

Breakwaters, which have been successful in other bay locations, allow limited erosion, slowing the process for homeowners but maintaining beetle habitat, Therres said.

So what does all of this boil down to ontologically? Folks such as Southern Baptist who actively promote our alienation from ourselves also end up promoting our greater alienation from the natural world. And conversely, these same folks actively promote our greater alienation from the natural world, such as this article by Boggs, because they sense that by doing that they are also promoting our greater alienation from ourselves and from each other.

Southern Baptists aren’t fully conscious of what they are doing, because if they were they would never do what they do. But until they do understand the great harm they are causing, everyone who meets Southern Baptists should think in the back of his or her mind: Danger! Danger! Alienation! Alienation!

The ontological world each of us lives in is determined by our degree of realself: those of us who are being mostly if not almost entirely our socialselves live in the socialself world, and those of us who are sensitive to our realselves live in ontological worlds that are made up of more of the realself world.

A few things can be said about socialself people:

• They are not aware of their realselves, and so they never spend any time thinking about realself emotions and ideas
• It never occurs to them to increase their degrees of realself
• The socialself world and socialself life both seems real and complete to them
• They are satisfied with their socialself-to-socialself relationships, even with their spouses
• By not being aware of their realselves they are free to devote all of their lives to becoming more successful in the socialself world
• They want to develop deeper “roots” into the socialself world
• They believe the more they are living in the socialself world, the more they are living in reality—in the “real world”—and the more well-adjusted they are. (Incidentally, it’s ontological ideas like this last one that are responsible for my calling the presently unknown but vast area of human existence “ontological” and not psychological. In most cases today, psychology is socialself psychology.)

Socialself people like to think they have life and themselves all figured out, and so they don’t need to spend any time thinking about them. They also like to think that the people who do spend time thinking about ontological questions have “not found themselves,” “need to grow up,” and “need to stop fighting the world.”

In fact, of course, it’s socialself people’s profound alienation that makes them think this, and it is the socialself world’s profound ontological alienation that makes it possible for these socialself people, and for decreasing realself people, to believe this.

A few things can also be said about increasing realself people:

• They have a sense on some level of their own realself, of the realselves in others, and of the realself world and the life in it
• They are aware that the socialself world is not their ontological world or “true home”
• They are not interested in becoming socialself world successes, mainly because they want to spend as little time in that world as possible: they sense that to live in the socialself world is to become one’s socialself
• They are interested in becoming more their realselves, in developing realself-to-realself relationships, and in making “the world” and “life” more the realself world and realself life
• They do not want to “develop roots” into the socialself world
• They sense that to become “well-adjusted” in the socialself world actually means to repress one’s realself and to become more if not all one’s socialself

Graham in Sex, Lies, and Videotape was an increasing realself person, and the life he lives confirms it:

• He liked having only one key

Right now I have one key, you know, everything I own is in the car. I like that. If I get an apartment, that’s two keys. If I get a job, you know, I might have to open or close. That’s more keys. I buy some stuff, I’m afraid it’s gonna get ripped off, and I get more keys. I just like having the one key. It’s clean.

• He chose to be a renter rather than a home owner
• Having a car was important to him—“The car’s important. You gotta be mobile”: he could leave where he was or go to where he wanted to be whenever he wanted
• He says he was “cultivating this minimalist vibe.”
• His life was focused on ontological emotions and ideas, and he had no interest in becoming a socialself world success.

Some of Graham’s behavior seems odd, if not even amusing, but one has to keep in mind that he and people like him are actively, but also in many ways blindly, struggling forward to understand difficult questions that most adults have already failed to understand, and then redefined their failures into some type of “success.”

Taking all of this into consideration, what’s needed now is for everyone to become more conscious of ontological worlds—what they are, why they are developed, and why they have the beliefs they do—so that the different ways people live their lives can be seen for what are actually motivating them.

The people who are living happily in the socialself world don’t know it, but the age of alienated ontological worlds, their beliefs, and their self is reaching its end.

Several of my posts here have been critical of Catholics, and the main reason for that is that Catholics and the Vatican have pushed themselves to the front of those who are working to get all of us to become more alienated. But there are other organizations besides the RCC that are working to accomplish this, such as the Southern Baptist Convention.

I was reading the Baptist Press and came across an article, Christians & movies (part 1), by Christian movie reviewer Phil Boatwright. After reading a few paragraphs, the thought popped into my head: beneath everything else, this guy is saying, “Help! The World’s Too Big for Me! Make It Smaller!”

Boatwright doesn’t like profanity:

Clark Gable’s famous line in “Gone With The Wind” — “Frankly my dear, I don’t give a d***” — caused quite a stir back in 1939. How times have changed.

although I have to admit, I’ve watched movies where I’ve thought, “Nobody I know cusses anywhere near that much.”

Boatwright also doesn’t like using the Lord’s name in vain. But in a review of the movie Avatar, which has made more money than any other film, he writes “the film is anti-war, anti-military and anti-human. That’s too anti for me.” So, for those of us who are learning what a “Christian” is, it’s wrong to say the word “damn,” and it’s also wrong to be against war.

Turning for a moment to increasing realself people, it’s not uncommon for those who are in the early transition to say they feel imprisoned, trapped, or confined. Or they might say they feel as if the sky and all the ceilings of buildings are only 5-feet high, meaning that life has become painfully constricting to them. The world is too small for these people because they are starting to realize that the day-to-day world, which is now and has been a socialself world, does not permit them to be all their realselves in it.

But decreasing realself people, such as Boatwright, feel just the opposite: to them the world has actually expanded beyond what it should be and needs to be contracted. For these people, the world is too big, they can’t handle it, and they want to shrink it by making it, ourselves, our relationships, our lives, and even the future all smaller.

What’s bad about all of this is that the smaller world these people want to bring about is actually a more alienated world. “Modernity,” for instance, is rejected because it represents an actual or even a potential increase in degree of realself. To these alienated and fearful folks, the past–when we were even less our realselves than we are now–is where we all need to go.

The Ontological War is starting another series, Help! The World’s Too Big for Me! Make It Smaller! This series will explain what’s really going on with the seemingly tireless efforts by decreasing realself people to make human selfhood and human life even less than they are now.

Frank L. Cocozzelli has written an interesting article, “The Politics of Schism in the Catholic Church,” in which he examines the church’s moving toward a more conservative, if not reactionary, direction.

For those of us who have been keeping up even slightly with what the Vatican and “traditional” Catholics have been up to lately, this shift is nothing new. A few of the incidents Cocozzelli mentions are

• The church’s embrace of SSPX
• Bishop Robert Finn, head of the Kansas City-St. Joseph diocese, telling an audience, “We are at war.”
• Rev. C. John McCloskey’s homage to Edward Bellamy: “2030: Looking Backwards.” In “2030″ McCloskey describes a future time when America no longer exists and the Catholic church’s complete assimilation into the Culture of Alienation has narrowed its focus considerably. (Don’t tell anyone because no official announcement has yet been made, but this 5,000-word piece has probably earned Rev. C. John the next The Prof. L. Bernard Budlong Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Intellectual Defense of Ontological Alienation!)
• The Pope’s calling for a “leaner, smaller, purer church.”

At first glance, this schism may seem religious, and almost assuredly it does to traditional Catholics, but Bishop Finn is right, this schism is actually a war, and it is not a theological, religious, moral, or cultural war but an ontological war.

For whatever reasons, the Catholic church has decided to go in an increasingly alienated direction, and a quick review of traditional Catholic websites and blogs reveals that there are many ontologically festering Catholics who are happy to go along with the Vatican. But even though Pope Benedict, recent popes, and the church have, through their weakness and fear, failed at life doesn’t mean that the rest of us have to follow them.

The Pope wants a “leaner” Roman Catholic Church, and personally I’m all in favor of traditional Catholics standing in front of the door of “their” church on Sunday morning and physically preventing any Catholic who is for abortion, who uses contraceptives, who believes that gays should be treated equally, or who voted for Obama from entering “their” church. If the Vatican wants to make a concerted effort to become yet another outfit promoting alienation–and is wiling to trade its religious foundation in order to help bring about that change, which it is doing–my thought is let them do it.

Finally, I made a small graphic that represents the new Catholic church: The RCC INC. The new organization or outfit is welcome to use the graphic all it wants to help brand its new mission, and I won’t even charge them for it. Consider it my public service to humankind.

In a previous post, Dr. David Barton: Jesus Is My Bitch!, I explained how decreasing realself people are trying to make public schools more alienating, and a recent decision by the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals shows that the courts are being used to do the same thing.

In yet another Ten Commandments’ case, the court, by a 2-1 decision, held that the commandments could be publicly displayed along with eight other historical documents in Kentucky’s Grayson County Courthouse. Religion Clause and the Lexington Herald-Leader both write about the case.

I’m not going to go into the details about the decision: anyone who reads the opinion and the article by the Herald-Leader will see that two ontologically alienated judges wanted to bring about an ontologically alienated decision, and this is what they did.

The point I want to go into is the comment by the ACLU lawyer, William E. Sharp, after the decision:

Sharp, however, said the organization feels it is important to protect the rights of everyone and ensure that government does not become a vehicle to promote one religion over another, or to promote religion generally.

This is wrong. The problem is not that government shouldn’t promote religion or one religion over another: the problem is that governments absolutely should not promote ontological alienation, and without the slightest doubt that is what this decision does.

Most people are completely oblivious of what is taking place deeper within them ontologically, but once we all become more conscious of who we are and why we act and believe as we do, decisions like this will never be made.

The ontological war is fought incrementally on countless fronts, and in this case those who are afraid and ignorant of who they are ontologically are using the courts to get those of us who aren’t to become just as big of failures of self and life as they are.

A few days ago UPI had a story about two guys in Texas who want the Texas Board of Education to start including Christianity’s role in social studies in its schools:

[David] Barton [of Wallbuilders] and [Rev. Peter] Marshall want Texas public schools to focus more on points of history related to Christianity. Among their suggestions are teaching how the Bible influenced certain historical documents or how Christian pilgrims signed the Mayflower Compact of 1620.

But not all Christians are christians; Prof. John Fea, a history professor at Pennsylvania’s Messiah College:

“I’m an evangelical Christian, and I think David Barton and Peter Marshall are completely out to lunch,” offered Fea, whose school is a Christian institution.

“They are preachers who use the past and history as a means of promoting a political agenda in the present,” he added.

Prof. Fea is right about what these preachers are trying to do—“promoting a political agenda”—but these two men are also trying to accomplish something much more devious and damaging. They are trying to sneak alienated ontological ideas under the cloak of religion into public schools as history.

It is not a better understanding of history by students that Barton and Marshall are after, but to change the students ontologically. And since there is no doubt that they want the students to become more alienated ontologically, all the parents of students in Texas should be alarmed.

The ontological war is fought everywhere, including from kindergarten to graduate schools. Decreasing realself parents have been aware of this, and that is why they have pulled their kids from public schools: They don’t want their kids to become more their realself. Increase realself parents, on the other hand, need to become fully conscious of the fact that not only are decreasing realself parents pulling their kids out of public schools, those parents are also trying to change public schools into decreasing realself schools: schools that actively promote ontological alienation.

Taking this all into consideration, every parent needs to ask himself or herself this pivotal question: “Do I want my children to come home from school every afternoon a little more alienated than they were when they left in the morning?”

A previous post explains the thoughts behind the Jesus Is My Bitch! series, and I’ve included this q in the Decreasing Realself Quotes in the right sidebar.

Some people, ostensibly Christians, use religion and Christianity to help them bring about an alienated ontological world to match their own failed ontological states.

Many of these Christians roam the countryside looking for people who disagree with them, and then they use the Bible, God, Jesus, Christianity, and religion as weapons to attack those who do not agree with them. For these Christian, Jesus is not Love but just another tool like “religious freedom” to use in manipulating others to become as alienated as they are.

Ontologically, these christians (if they can self-define themselves as “Christians,” then I can call them christians when they aren’t being “Christian”) have become religious pimps, and Jesus has become their bitch.

I’ve recently also been thinking about communication. For instance, to use an extreme case, with quite a few young earth creationists—people who believe the world is only a few thousand years old—a person could seemingly explain to them forever why their worldview is factually wrong, but they would still not change their beliefs. Regular communication, logical and rational, doesn’t work with them.

The question then comes to mind: How does one reach people who have pulled themselves into an ontological cul-de-sac, turned completely around so they face a benighted decreasing realself world, and then blind and deafen themselves to all thoughts about moving forward ontologically?

There has to be other ways of reaching people like this ontologically, and that is where the idea of using parody images of “Jesus Is My Bitch” started: these images will be attempts to reach people who have failed and retreated ontologically to such a degree that they seem unreachable in any other way.

Some Christians will be offended by the images, but if they don’t like them they should get the christians who use Jesus, God, and Christianity in ontologically harmful ways to stop. It is, after all, their religion.

“Jesus Is My Bitch!” posts could become a regular series, since many christians fall into this category. The first person in the series will be Dr. David Barton.

On first reading this blog, some people will see the tags “Good Alienation” and “Bad Alienation” and wonder how alienation can ever be both good and bad. Common sense tells us that alienation is always wrong, simply because of what it is: We should not be alienated from life, from reality, or from ourselves and others.

This is true, of course, but the point that is being missed is that we are all alienated ontologically now, and it is how we deal with that alienation that determines if our alienation and our understanding of it is something positive or something negative.

Good alienation is expressed when people look forward ontologically, see or sense realself life ahead of them, and then use that knowledge in their descriptions of and their coping with their alienation.

Bad alienation, on the other hand, is expressed when people look forward ontologically but don’t see the realself life there. Because of this, they turn and reject everything in that direction, and with this ontological reversal and the flawed knowledge that comes with it these people end up actually defending ontological alienation, even though they think they are condemning it.

Of course, all alienation is harmful and wrong. But considering how alienated we are now, expressions of alienation that show an awareness of how to end it permanently become, in a convoluted way that is common in the Transition, “good.”

In two future posts, one on good alienation and one on bad alienation, I’ll give examples of both types of alienation from people who are experiencing them.

The Ontological War blog is proud to announce the creation of The Prof. L. Bernard Budlong Award for Outstanding Achievement in Intellectually Defending Ontological Alienation. This award, which will also be called The Budlong Award or simply The Budlong, will be awarded to men, women, and organizations that “go the extra mile” using their noggin in trying to convince all of us that profound alienation is the answer to life.

The Budlong Award is named after “L. Bernard Budlong”—a college professor in Jack Finney’s book Invasion of the Body Snatchers—who becomes podded and then tries to explain to Miles and Becky why they should become pod people.

A decision has not yet been made, but there has been talk that each winner will receive his, her, their, or its very own iPod!

If the winners e-mail us, we will be happy to send them a certificate that they can frame, proudly hang in their office or home, and use in bragging to all their friends about their great accomplishments in retarding humankind’s progress!

Exciting Update: A Prof. L. Bernard Budlong Award Commemorative Statue is in the design stage. The statue, which will be made out of partially ground-up corn husks and paper mache, will be of a mannequin facing forward, devoid of facial features, with both arms raised straight over its head and holding a pod.

Most winners will be chosen when we run smack-dab into them while reading the news on the internet, but if you know of anyone or any organization you would like to nominate, please send it to us via our Contact Us page.

There appears to be two main categories of people who dislike the Roman Catholic Church. The larger of these includes all the Protestant conservatives and fundamentalists who disagree with the RCC over theology. Tim LaHaye, John Hagee, Jehovah’s Witnesses, etc., with their talk of “a false religion” and the “Great Whore of Babylon,” all fit into this first group. It’s probably fair to describe many if not most of these people as “anti-Catholic.” The other group includes mainly me now, but I dislike the RCC because I’m fully conscious of how damaging ontological alienation is, and the RCC aggressively promotes that alienation. Theology is a mind-numbingly stupid subject to me, and so my central concern with the RCC is its vigorous attempts to get all of us to become more alienated.

The Mormons and religious fundamentalists also promote ontological alienation, but they seem to be subtler in their blogs about it (Mormons) or they are so wacky that it is hard to take them seriously (fundamentalists).

There are more Decreasing Realself Links here to Catholic blogs and sites than to Mormon or fundamentalist blogs, but that happens only because, as “anonymous” says in one of the random quotes in the right sidebar, “Non-contentious Catholic blogs ARE hard to find.” It is true: there are a lot of ontologically festering Catholics.

I may be the only person now who consciously dislikes the RCC for ontological reasons, but eventually everyone who will want to become all his or her realself and to have realself-to-realself relationships will come to despise the RCC’s attempts to lead us all down the false and ontologically diminishing path of rejecting who we truly are.

Note: This post doesn’t address any of the important conflicts between religious freedom and ontological freedom, another area where the RCC is deeply committed to the wrong side.

In a previous post I wrote “My opinion of the Catholic Church has plummeted over the last few years.”

In response, many will say, with justification, “we don’t care what your opinion is, we want to know facts, what’s true and what isn’t. Is the Catholic Church alienated or isn’t it?” But by looking at this question in these simplistic terms one fails to consider the important underlying ontological processes that are taking place.

Every degree of realself has its own ontological world: the socialself has its socialself world and the realself has the realself world, which is also reality. And each of these worlds, along with the countless ontological worlds between them, has its own beliefs, values, emotions, and “facts” that are, at least when looked at superficially, internally consistent and consistent with its degree of realself.

What all of this means is that there are socialself “facts,” increase realself “facts,” and decreasing realself “facts.” And for the people who are at these degrees of realself, their own “facts” seem true, right, self-evident, and the best to them.

Going back to the Roman Catholic Church and its alienation, the real question is not whether the church is ontologically alienated or not: it is.

Instead, one needs to realize that decreasing realself people are not conscious of their realselves and the realself world, and so many of them “rewrite reality” on the fly. Religious fundamentalists who say the world is only a few thousand years old are a good example of this rewriting of reality to satisfy one’s failed ontological state.

Keeping all of this in mind, it doesn’t do much good to explain to decreasing realself people why the RCC is alienated, because at their low degrees of realself they are unable to “see” it. Instead, what needs to be done is to make them aware that as they decrease their alienation from who they truly are they will also recognize that alienation when others try to force it upon them.