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I am... prophesizing!

tbuckner's picture
May 8, 2005 - 6:37am — tbuckner

Tom Paine, whose pamphlet Common Sense made him an intellectual hero of the American Revolution, wrote The Age Of Reason about twenty years later. It's all about how organized religion is ridiculous and stupid, and naturally people treated him like a leper for writing it.

It contains the following passage which I thought interesting enough to repeat here at Volcano Boy.



"There is not, throughout the whole book called the Bible, any word that describes to us what we call a poet, nor any word that describes what we call poetry. The case is, that the word prophet, to which latter times have affixed a new idea, was the Bible word for poet, and the word prophesying meant the art of making poetry. It also meant the art of playing poetry to a tune upon any instrument of music.

We read of prophesying with pipes, tabrets, and horns

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May 8, 2005 - 9:14am — duncan
duncan's picture

Re: I am... prophesizing!

"North Sea Bubble"

[Originally by Billy Bragg]

I went out drinking with Thomas Paine
He said that all revolutions are not the same
They are as different as the cultures
That give them birth
For no one idea
Can solve every problem on Earth

So don't expect it all to happen
In some prophesied political fashion
For people are different
And so are nations
You can borrow ideas
But you can't borrow situations

In Leningrad the people say
Perestroika can be explained this way
The people who told us
That two and two is ten
Are now trying to tell us
That two and two is five

We're living in a North Sea Bubble
We're trying to spend our way out of trouble

You keep buying these things but you don't need them
But as long as you're comfortable it feels like freedom

My American friends don't know what to do
But they'll wait a long time for a Beverley Hills coup

War! What is it good for
It's good for business

May 8, 2005 - 10:22am — abnormalbrain
abnormalbrain's picture

Re: I am... prophesizing!

eureka.