Teacher Wars

Jesus went to the Temple. Jesus, a Jew, called Rabbi (or Teacher), was surrounded by other Jews, also called Rabbi (or Teacher). Those other rabbis had a hierarchy: a Sanhedrin, with relations to secular hierarchies: a king, called Herod.

Jesus came with something to teach: messages, from God. The other rabbis were supposed to teach messages from God. Jesus was supposed to have cleansed the temple. Obviously, the other rabbis just turned the money tables business-side back up again. They sandbagged Jesus, had him arrested, got rid of him; not without teaching him some severe lessons of their own.

Kleptocrats are presented with institutions they are told, as children, are there to serve them, to educate them, to protect them. Universities, for example, are there to foster learning. Universities are full of teachers: and students, and deans, and administrators.

Jesus' temple was a site of teacher wars: Jesus being imagined as the losing teacher, the teacher who was right.

Universities too are sites of teacher wars. Do any right teachers ever win there? Sure.

What percentage? All? Some? Few?

How could we tell? Wait! See if anyone is left alive. If there's a surviving population, then sufficient learning took place: sufficient at least for the moment.

But consider this: where new learning is involved, the wrong teachers will always outnumber the right teacher: and the population at large will always back the teachings they're familiar with; not the teachings that could help them survive.

Don't think for one second that I'm blaming leaders for our fix. There is no belfry without a foundation.

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I add a word to be further developed later: Don't imagine that I'm just talking about religion, or politics, or humans: the same applies to any phenotype of any species living in time, within evolution. The mosquito that mates with this mosquito instead of that mosquito, the heron that eats this fish instead of that fish, the leaf that gathers this light instead of the light a millimeter further away, is determining the future of its descendants: and the future of its entire ecology!

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The following I don't doubt belongs in a post of its own: I scratch a note to be developed and perhaps moved at another time:

One

Was Jesus, entering the Temple, one? or many? Were his disciples with him? Thus: was he one? or thirteen? or some number in between

Three Magi

The gospels tell of three Magi coming to visit the infant Jesus. Was that three men fitting into a stable already occupying Mary, Joseph, Jesus and assorted sheep, cattle, goats? Or more?

Magi were known never to travel without at least forty-thousand troops. Were there thus three armies, totally at least one hundred-twenty thousand men at arms? (and who knows how many camp followers, whores, and hangers on? all crowded into a tiny stable? Or did the magi's troops remain outside? in the court yard? or nearby, at the K-Kourt?

Shakespeare's kings refer to themselves as "we." A second latter they call themselves "England": or "France." Feudal kings didn't think of themselves as individuals the way contemporary American individualists do

Notice: these questions have a great deal to do with the idea of monotheism! Is God one? or three? Or infinity?

When the terminator promised, "I'll be back," he meant himself, the cyborg, individually. When US General Douglas MacArthur said, "I shall return," he did not mean alone.