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“Racism is the product of tribalism.” ~ Buckminster Fuller

I have watched the recent episodes of racial conflict with fear and trembling.

As a white male, I am not singed with the same wound of institutionalized bigotry. And yet, during the Republican National Convention in New York City in 2004, when I left my apartment to pick up my sushi dinner, I was caught up in a police dragnet of protesters, falsely arrested, falsely charged, and falsely prosecuted with evidence intended to frame my guilt.

I have seen first-hand the duplicity of our police state that presumes guilt in anyone who challenges the status quo… which draws us immediately to the heart of the matter: as human beings, we always only act from our own perspective of belief. It’s just a question of what we believe.

Because what we believe is what we do. 

If we believe, for example, that a “demon” is chasing us down, then we will act to protect our life by any means necessary, as officer Darren Wilson believed when he gunned down Michael Brown.

If, on the other hand, we believe that our best hope for personal empowerment is to override a broken social system and take matters into our own hands, then we will act as Michael Brown did, stealing what he wanted and resisting the law officer who attempted to confine him within the rules of the system. Of course, Michael Brown is not alone in believing that it’s not in his best interest to passively follow along with the status quo of American society. He is not alone in believing that our socio-economic system is corrupted and unjust.

And yet, there is a group of people who hold a very different perspective, believing that the structure of our American way of life must be preserved and protected at all cost. This group of people believes that the biggest threat to our way of life as Americans are those who wish to break down our way of life.

One belief system holds that this society is utterly bankrupt of its inalienable promises—that all men and women are created equal with equal rights to life, liberty and happiness. Meanwhile, another belief system holds the opposite perspective that this society is the greatest democracy on the face of the Earth, and it must be protected against all threats foreign and domestic.

The roots of this ideological clash go down to the very core of what it is that we believe as human beings. And so, it’s a great mistake to believe that this current clash of beliefs is actually a black vs. white racial issue. The roots go far deeper into our tribal heritage.

Yes, this American white society has been unjust, to say the least, to black folks.

But, the deeper problem has nothing to do with race. The deeper problem is actually an us vs. them issue. It’s an issue of one group vs. another group, one tribe vs. another tribe.

It’s a power struggle between opposing factions of self-identified difference. And, whenever it’s pitted as a question of us vs. them, then historically the group with more power has always exerted its power upon members of the other group.

This means that we treat the “other” who is not part of our self-identified group as a less-than-human threat or enemy, to whom the basic human qualities do not apply. Simply put, we don’t put a human face on those who we believe are not part of our group.

Whoever we consider to be beyond the boundary of our chosen in-group does not qualify in our consciousness as a feeling, bleeding, thinking human being. They are considered other and sub-human. And, they are instantly, irrevocably viewed with suspicion. Their presence signals psychological danger and threat to our self-selected, self-chosen grouping.

And, this belief system of us vs. them has been the bedrock foundation of human tribal society for thousands of years.

It has far deeper roots than the current black vs. white issue in American society. It has been the justification for treating humans as sub-human others in every corner of the globe, from the ancient empires of Sumer and Byzantium, to the current problems of human slave-trafficking and sex-workers.

According to this belief pattern, the self-selected chosen group is compared and contrasted in all ways favorably to the other. The in-group comes out on top in every possible binary opposition: superior, chosen, elect, special, and saved vs. inferior, worse, ignorant, evil, and godless.

And, yes, it’s the same belief system that gave Hitler the fodder for his idea of a chosen race. It provided him justification to exterminate the subhuman others.

And so, what we’re really talking about at its root is a belief system that separates and divides human beings into groupings, where one group believes it’s better than the sub-human other. It’s an ancient story told in tribal societies as each tribe vied for success against the other.

Not just among the tribes of Mesopotamia were these stories of us vs. them told, but also on the North American continent.

It might shock you to learn, for example, that a Comanche brave would do far worse to an enemy Ute than Office Wilson did to Michael Brown. Torture, rape, disembowelment, scalping, and cutting off the genitalia were routine practices among tribes of the Great Plains. And, needless to say, the Comanche brave would receive great status in the tribe for doing this to his enemy “other.”

Now, it’s worth noting that the name Comanche means simply “the enemy” in the Ute language. As European settlers poured into the Great Plains, we came to know that tribe of people by their enemy’s name for them. To themselves, in their own language, they call themselves, not Comanche, but Numinu, or simply “the people.”

And, so standing aside from our own racial conflict for a moment, we can perhaps see the issue in stark relief. One group is known to itself as “the people” and the other is known simply as “the enemy.” And, each grouping has the same pattern of belief, believing itself to be “the people” and everyone else who is not part of their group, to be “the enemy.”

And, this is our history. It’s from whence we have come. From tribally grouped social structures, we have evolved into a capitalist democracy where theoretically all tribes of people are offered the same inalienable rights.

And yet, the archaic belief system of us vs. them refuses to die even in our non-tribally based society. We linger with this out-dated belief of in-group vs. out-group, this belief that was once born out of necessity when tribes of people really did fight each other to the death over scarce resources.

And so, the real question is—why?

Why do we tarry with this archaic tribal belief system of us vs. them, a belief system that divides human beings into groups of other subject to sub-human treatment and demonic justification?

We could easily argue that these archaic beliefs are encoded in our DNA and buried deep within our brain stem, our so-called “reptilian” brain. And, that may well be so. But why on Earth would we actively perpetuate such a belief system that causes us so much grief, pain and tragedy?

Unfortunately, we perpetuate this archaic belief of us vs. them because it’s a belief system we hold dear to our hearts. For, yes indeed, it’s the very same belief system of our cherished scriptures.

Even though Jesus clearly preached a universal message to all, Christians delight in believing that they are a chosen people, saved, while the others are not. It has been a debilitating scourge on our Western evolution, from crusades, and inquisitions, to the wholesale slaughter of “savages.”

This us vs them belief system forms the very basis of Hebrew scripture and thus the basis of Christian beliefs too. It starts with the Exodus of the chosen people who escaped from their “godless” captors. But, then as soon as this same tribe of people gains power over a neighbor, we can read about Joshua’s genocidal campaign against the hapless Canaanites.

And, this us vs. them tribal belief system is, of course, inherited by Islam and encoded in the Koran. But, it’s a belief pattern encoded not just with Muslims, also Hindus, and Buddhists, and every religious story about one chosen group who is special while the unlucky others are not.

And, we must understand: every single one of these cherished stories emerged from within a tribal context where people really did live according to an us vs. them motif.

But now, what happens every single time we go to Church, Temple, Mosque or Synagogue is that we re-awaken and re-animate this ancient, out-dated, primal story of tribal survival.

We are literally worshipping at the altar of us vs them.

It is the story that we most love, that we hold most dear: a story of a chosen group at odds with the godless other. And then, we wonder why we enact that same power-struggle of one group against another group in our society.

What we believe is what we do.

And, the terribly tragic irony is that both white and black folks, seeking solace for the racial clash, will return to their biblical stories for answers and comfort! And so, we return to the same stories of us vs. them in order to find a solution to the problem of us vs. them! Wow!

In psychological terms, when we continue to do the same thing over and over again expecting a different outcome, it’s called “insanity.” Our insanity is to continue worshiping at the altar of us vs. them and expect to see all people communing together in harmony!

Our Western religious heritage is all, without exception, rooted in stories of a chosen people who struggle against the other. And, we sanctimoniously fill our minds and our hearts with these stories of a chosen group of people vying against the other.

What happens is that white people self-identify as the chosen people in these cherished religious stories. And, so do black folks. Each group self-righteously believes of itself that it is chosen and special, while the other is not.

And, so long as we continue to cherish these beliefs of a chosen people vying against the other, then we will continue to act accordingly.

Thus, if we hold dear this archaic, out-dated, tribal perspective of us vs. them, then we will continue to find conflict in our midst, not just between white vs. black, but also rich vs. poor, and men vs. women. It’s a simple function of our underlying beliefs.

As the belief patterning of us vs. them goes: anyone who is not with us is against us.

And that means, according to this belief system, that anyone who is not actively upholding our American way of life is not with us, and is in the same category as a terrorist. And so, our police officers are now fighting against anyone “else” as if that person were an Al Qaeda operative.

And, if we want to stop the madness of our own police officers fighting against us, like cancer metastasizing in the body, then we must stop worshiping this insidious story of us vs. them! This belief system has been sanctified as our most holy of beliefs. And, we act accordingly, dividing ourselves into us vs. them.

Now, at this point, the atheists are cheering. But, our story isn’t quite finished.

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete. ~ Buckminster Fuller.”

To discard these perniciously sanctified and solemnized stories of us vs. them without replacing them with something else would result in a power vacuum. Without anything to believe, we find ourselves in nihilism. And, in a nihilistic power vacuum, anything goes because nothing is sacred.

And, I believe, the main reason we have not collectively jettisoned these harmful beliefs of us vs. them is precisely because we have not known what else to believe. We have not known how else to provide for ourselves a solid foundation of belief.

The story of us vs. them has been our bedrock for thousands of years. It’s been the basis of our survival. It’s all we’ve known in our recorded history. We have thus made it into our most holy of all stories. And, perhaps we’ve done that because it was better the devil we knew than the devil we didn’t know!

I would have concluded the same until recently. For, it was only recently that I realized there is another way. We do have another possible basis of human being other than us vs. them.

There is something else to believe.

It’s a belief system that comprehends our reality as a mathematical matrix. And, in this higher order mathematical harmony, all of our low-level diametrically opposed us vs. them polarities are unified in synergy.

And, believe it or not, it’s actually a belief system far older than any of our mainstream religiously tribal stories of human being.

It comes part in parcel with the realization that our human evolution on this planet has been cyclical, not linear. Our progression has not simply been a straight-line process of evolution from cave man to homo sapien. We have lived in cyclical spirals of growth and decay and growth and decay.

We are emerging from a cycle of decay now, a cycle characterized by conflict among divided interests, distinct groups playing a zero-sum game of competition to achieve a perceived victory over the other. This competitive-conflictual perspective has given us stories of us vs. them that we have erroneously considered holy and eternal. But, in fact, these are limited stories emerging from a specific context.

In a prior cycle, previous to the one solemnized in our religious tribalism, we have actually lived in a more enlightened, more cooperative, and more advanced civilization than we do know. And, in that context, there was a completely different understanding of our human reality upon this planet.

According to this ancient, enlightened understanding of our human reality, we are living inside of a mathematical hologram. What we call “reality” is actually a holographic projection formulated by numerical strings or patterns that form the precise mathematical grid.

Why is this relevant now to this discussion, you may ask?

Well, when we realize that we are each playing out numerical patterns inside of this mathematical holo-deck, then we realize that we are all part of a string symphony.

In other words, our lives are lived out as a numbers game on the strings of life. And, we each have a numerical part to play in the whole. And, so the model is not us vs. them, but rather part-to-whole.

Specifically, it’s a fractal understanding of reality where each part is itself a whole that is also a part of a larger whole. And, our society can reflect that same harmony once we shift our perspective to that awareness.

In this belief system, one person may be living out one pattern, while another may be living according to a different mathematical function. But, both people are living out parts that represent the larger whole. And, no matter who the person is, no matter which part is being played, that part is a perfect part of the larger whole.

Fundamentally, it’s a perspective of reality that expresses and includes a harmonic place for all, one in which we would actually be poorer for the loss of that part of the whole. It gives us a belief system from which to actually act in concert with each other as whole parts of a larger whole.

Now, the most amazing thing about this belief system of a mathematically inclusive harmony is that it is not abstract. It is not merely theoretical. In fact, it is astoundingly concrete.

The mathematical hologram inside of which we live and move and have our being is depicted in the ordinary deck of playing cards. What we have called “playing cards” is actually a mathematical model corresponding to the mathematical hologram called reality.

And while this may sound like a fantastical claim, consider these numbers:

• The deck is composed of 52 “cards,” and our year is composed of 52 weeks.
• There are 4 suits in the deck and 4 seasons in the year.
• Each suit contains 13 cards and each season has 13 weeks.
• If you add the spot values of each card, where the ace is worth 1, then the Jack, Queen, and King are each worth 11, 12, and 13 respectively then we have: 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 6 + 7 + 8 + 9 + 10 + 11 + 12 + 13 = 91
• And, there are 91 days in each season.
• Combine the values of all 4 suits and we have 91 x 4 = 364.
• The Joker is the 53^rd archetype and his numeric value is himself plus each of the four suits divided by the four suits he represents or 1+1/4 = 5/4 which reduces to 1 ¼
• When we place the Joker back into the deck we get 365 ¼

The deck of cards is thus a precise representation of our Earth revolving around the Sun. Even the lunar cycles are represented accurately, as there are 13 lunar cycles each year that are four weeks long.

This deck thus depicts our life on Earth.

Now, to an ancient mind, a collection of loose leaves could still be considered a book. Recall that books of the bible were written on scrolls and parchment. To our modern mind, the leaves must be bound to qualify as a book. Not so, in ancient times. These 52 + 1 leaves that represent our life upon this Earth were known in ancient esoteric spiritual societies as a book—a book of numbers and symbols representing the mathematical matrix in which we find ourselves. It is a book that represents life as we know it.

It’s none other than the ancient, fabled Book of Life. And, there are more than twenty references in our Bible to the Book of Life. The deck of cards is the Book of Life. It has been hidden in plain sight all this time, which is, of course, the best place to hide anything.

But, now as we emerge from a cycle of lower-consciousness, growing into a more enlightened consciousness, the Book of Life comes back to our awareness so that we can construct a more enlightened, harmonious society.

We can leverage this Book of Life to live in mathematical harmony. Once we learn to read the Book of Life for ourselves, then we can start living what is written for us to be and do in this life.

It’s a completely different basis of belief than us vs. them and for many, it may completely challenge everything once believed to be sacred. And yet, it offers the foundation for a resolution to our enduring in-group vs. out-group tension. It represents a single, global language of mathematics that we can all speak together. So, we can all speak the same language and we can all find ourselves in union with the larger whole of our reality.

You might not believe me until you have discovered the truth of this mathematical synergy for yourself to see the astonishing accuracy with which your life is expressed in the numbers and symbols of this ancient Book.

We each have 13 cards to play for life, 13 pages in the Book. These are determined mathematically according to the numbers of our date of birth.

Hence, we are all here to play the cards we’ve been dealt. And, we are all alike as Earthlings, natives of this planet. We are altogether playing a numbers game. And, we are all richer for the addition and multiplication of our synergy.

I invite you to taste and see for yourself.

 

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Author: Alexander Hamilton Dunlop

Editor: Renée Picard

Photo: Imgur