For the first time ever, you can read the FULL story alongside the philosophical message that correlates with it EXCLUSIVELY in the album artwork!
COSMIC INNUENDO, VOL. II: Capsized Empire
the PHILOSOPHY behind the album’s story and lyrics
ESSAY HIGHLIGHTS:
>Nature and its Creator designed the Earth to be abundant.
>>The only reason people don’t have enough is because of fear and greed.
>>>Fear and greed produce villains.
Why Tyrants Exist: deprived—>depraved; malnourished brain—>malnourished ideology
You want to truly overthrow a tyrant? Overhaul the culture that produced him.
Psalm 37: everything contrary to the Law of the Earth will naturally be filtered out.
Heaven and Hell are life and death. The Villain is the product of the Kingdom of Hell, and The Kingdom of Heaven and Hell are within you. Pull down bricks from the Kingdom of Hell and build up the Kingdom of Heaven.
I am the tyrant as long as I’m still fueling the machine that produces tyrants.
Violence ONLY increases violence! Two negatives don’t make a positive.
Don’t be a victim, multiplying the crimes done to you by keeping them alive and growing them to hurt more people and add fuel to the downward cycle of death/build the walls of the Kingdom of Hell. Instead become a victor, canceling out even the one crime done to you and replacing it with good that builds the walls of the Kingdom of Heaven and fuels the upward cycle toward Shalom.
Concept of the album: The problem and solution of evil
THE PROBLEM
Why Tyrants Exist: deprived>depraved; malnourished brain>malnourished ideology
It’s so easy to point the finger at the end point on the spectrum of evil and bash Hitler or Stalin or Putin or Blackbeard or Fill in the Blank, but no man is an island, and those people weren’t alone doing their mischief. They were supported by like-minded people, themselves corrupted in the same way the leader had been, by false ideologies that evolved from their culture, and were further perverted by that culture who neglected their basic human needs being met. And so enough deficit of needs in enough people attracts them to one another, deprived people who will further solidify those false ideologies in each other and further corroborate upon them with their malnourished selves.
The tyrant has somehow found a way to twist things around in his brain and beliefs so that his depraved actions nourish his deprived needs, and thus the output of corruption is exponential, for he’s found a perverted way for destruction to meet his basic human needs of certainty, variety, significance, connection, growth, and contribution. The original evil of self-deficit (input) is doubled by the new evil of outward actions that create new deficit in others (output). It becomes an ever-increasing cycle of deficit: inward deficit leads to outward deficit which leads to greater inward deficit which leads to greater outward deficit and so on.
And when those deprived individuals are naturally attracted into a group, it self-fuels itself to become a group of depraved individuals, of which one individual has the most deprival, which leads to the most hunger and drive, which leads to the most depravity, and unfortunately this person who is most passionate to get his primal needs met is elected leader of the group because of his passion. With his extra depravity being praised and rewarded, it relieves some of his deprivation and only fuels his depravity further, which, in his increased maximum depravity (and increased passion behind it), pulls the group into his own depravity. A power like that at the perverted leaders’ bidding is atomic, for the power and praise he receives from the group only rewards his perverted actions and solidifies his corrupt beliefs. There’s no turning back, for the more destruction he creates the more fulfillment the perverted individual finds, and it’s an exponential, downward spiral. This is unsustainable and is eventually dissolved in the face of Nature, and so naturally the Law of Nature wins out. The perverted individual’s ideology is proven to be false in the end when tested against nature, because it turned out to be contrary to nature, and in this natural, designed world, nothing can exist outside of the natural design from which it originated.
“And so it turns out that to be depraved is to be deprived.”
Malnourished people create malnourished beliefs.
The brain is a body part. If malnourished it won’t function properly. And so an unhealthy brain perceives an unhealthy reality. And so, a malnourished brain generates malnourished ideologies.
Centuries in the making>Centuries in the deconstructing
There’s no immediate way to win against a tyrant, for the only immediate solution to end violence is with more violence, and so it takes evil to cancel evil, but while solving an immediate problem, if it’s evil plus evil it has to inevitably lead to greater evil in the world. And so the only immediate righteous response to a tyrant is to leave it in the hands of God and make the necessary sacrifices.
Everything in the Earth flows and adapts over long periods of time, from creatures to cultures to ideologies. Like anything else in the world, a problem centuries in the making cannot be undone overnight, and so a tyrant centuries in the making cannot be overthrown overnight, for the tyrant is so much more than just the person; the tyrant is the group of lesser tyrants which elected, supported, and submitted to him; and further it’s the culture of even lesser tyrants which supported, submitted, or tolerated them; and further it’s the ideologies that culture produced which led to a way of thinking in enough people’s minds that a group of people could even exist that thinks those ideologies are acceptable to be initiated, or supported, or even tolerated. And so there is no way to overthrow a tyrant righteously, for tyrants are actually a spirit: as vast as an entire country, as old as a stream of thought passed on for generations, as diverse as the variations of that ideology, as strong as the differing levels of its acceptance within that culture. [6-4-22-You want to truly overthrow a tyrant? Overhaul the culture that produced him.]
Psalm 37:
Nature, aka Natural Revelation, is the end all be all. For where Divine Revelation can be argued away, life and death can’t be argued away. It doesn’t matter what you believe, if it’s not healthy, then it’s not of God, and it will lead to death; but if it’s healthy, then it’s of God, and will lead to life. That’s all there is to it. And so the Law of the Earth HAS to prevail in the end, because that’s how the world was designed. And so everything contrary to the Law of the Earth will naturally be filtered out. Tyrants and evildoers alike will have their time of non-ideal, forced, manufactured, makeshift flourishing, and then it will eventually crumble like the house of cards it is and return to the dust, to the foundation for nature to start over again building something ACTUALLY great; that is, abundant, healthy, life-giving, true, and righteous.
Nature and its Creator design abundance
Nature is designed to be shared, with everything getting exactly what it needs when it needs it, and God maintains this harmony, supplying needs one day at a time. But when we don’t trust God, we live out of fear that our needs won’t get met; and so we break the law of Earth and Nature and God, and live selfishly and greedily, hoarding resources in our scarcity mindset, fearing there won’t be enough for ourselves. When we hoard, it offsets the balance of Earth’s resources (a hard thing to offset when nature is designed to produce more bountiful output than there is input, ie, one seed per tenfold fruit), and suddenly some have too much while others don’t have enough. And when some don’t have enough they become malnourished. The brain is just another body part, and so a malnourished brain perceives a malnourished, unhealthy, incorrect view of reality. This incorrect perception of reality creates a false worldview, which creates false ideologies. Unhealthy, incorrect ideologies and beliefs produce unhealthy, perverted actions (such as stealing, lying, and violence).
Likewise, the belief of scarcity leads to hoarding resources, which ironically is the thing that leads to actual scarcity. And thus in the real scarcity it produces, it breeds desperation in others to get their needs met. And so the deprived person has to work harder to get resources, and there is a greater fear of not getting one’s needs met. That desperate belief leads to desperate actions (such as stealing, lying, and violence) against the hoarders of resources, which only validates and perpetuates the hoarders’ fear of scarcity.
The fear of scarcity leads to actual scarcity through hoarding, which produces malnourishment and desperation in others, which leads them to incorrect beliefs and desperate actions. The incorrect beliefs fuel the desperate actions, and the desperate actions fuel the incorrect beliefs. And so what started as simple, ordinary fear of scarcity led to an exponentially imploding, downward spiral of worsening fear of scarcity and desperation to get one’s needs met.
And so every single day, every single thing that I do is either an act of faith that nature provides more than enough for everyone and that God Himself maintains that balance OR that there isn’t enough for everyone in nature and that God will not provide for us and so it’s up to ourselves to take care of ourselves and get more than we need just in case, at the expense of others, and every man for himself, survival of the fittest.
And so every single day, every single thing that I do is either creating the tyrants or heroes in the world. Either fortifying the walls of the kingdom of Hell or the kingdom of Heaven. Either adding fuel to the downward cycle that leads to death, or else the adding fuel to the upward cycle that leads to Shalom.
YOU are the tyrant!
So easy to blame the most obvious example, the most extreme case, but no person was just born that way. The tyrant individual came from a group; that group came from a country; that country was made up of individuals all connected whether they know it or not. Those interconnected citizens all exercise different beliefs that blended to create the tyrant’s ideology, and their different actions fueled the implementation of the tyrant’s ideology. And so we are all responsible for the tyrant, just as every individual is a concentrated manifestation of the group that created him. How can I put the blame on the tyrant when I know I’m daily fueling the system that created the tyrant? And if I helped to create a tyrant, then I must be somewhat of a tyrant myself! Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither was its ruler. And so every day I want to live the kind of life where every single action I take, every single force of energy I send out into the world, is pulling down one brick at a time from the wall of the tyrant’s Kingdom. Heaven and Hell are life and death. The Villain is the product of the Kingdom of Hell, and The Kingdom of Heaven and Hell are within you. Pull down bricks from the Kingdom of Hell and put them into/build up the Kingdom of Heaven.
The Solution
You don’t fight violence with violence; violence ONLY increases violence! Two negatives don’t make a positive. You fight violence with love. And so you LOVE your enemies. You PRAY for those who persecute you. For it’s the only way to break the cycle and the imploding downward spiral of violence that is actually perpetuated by the Hammurabi Code, the eye-for-an-eye-tooth-for-a-tooth, unsustainable system of justice. Justice is out of mankind’s reach; and only in the hands of God. The ONLY solution is to break the cycle by responding to violence with peace, injustice with grace, hatred with love, and so the forces of evil are canceled out; the negatives are instantly neutralized by the positives. It’s hard in the moment to not be justified, but we’re not fighting for the moment, and we’re not fighting for ourselves. We’re fighting for the big picture, the overall long term correction of the whole world. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and its tyrant wasn’t overthrown overnight.
Silver-lining/hopeful message:
Just as starvation creates hunger, so does trauma create ambition. Either the ambition of a victim to get revenge against those who caused the pain of trauma, or else ambition of a hero to get redemption so others don’t have to go through the same pain of trauma. Don’t be a putrid, despicable wuss of a person with nothing to be remembered for but a bad taste in people’s mouths, like a bag of trash whose remains are taken to the dump and forgotten.. Don’t be a victim, multiplying the crimes done to you by keeping them alive and growing them to hurt more people and add fuel to the downward cycle of death/fortify the walls of the Kingdom of Hell; Become a victor, canceling out even the one crime done to you and replacing it with good that fortifies the walls of the Kingdom of Heaven and fuels the upward cycle toward Shalom.
“Know all the rules of the game, but got no strength to play it. Don’t need more evidence, I need a miracle to hack my instinct. Put your strength in me, to bear their trespasses. Open my eyes to see their sin through the same grace that I’ve been given.” ~ “Scallywags”
And read the REST of the story and how it directly correlates to this philosophy EXCLUSIVELY in the album artwork!