AltInst: Merry Newtonmas!

As you may know, Christmas as a holiday was instituted a few centuries
after the alleged birth of Christ, on the day when the non-Christian
population used to have their festivities anyway. This operation to
ideologize the masses while letting them have their fun may have been
one of the most crucial and successful ideological decisions in the
history of the human society.

This later became a typical trick in substituting the meaning of an
event while preserving people's favorite ritual shell.

As an attempt to do this again for a good cause, some nice people (*)
came up with a suggestion to celebrate Newtonmas instead of Christmas.
Unlike Christ, Sir Isaac Newton was definitely born on December 25.
Newton's contribution to the world of reason and influence of his
thoughts on the essence of the modern civilization and worldviews and
occupations of most readers of this message - not to mention on the
existence of the technological systems that made sending this message
possible - is a lot more certain than contributions ever ascribed to
Christ.

  So why not put some sense into your festivities and celebrate Newtonmas
tomorrow? This can be fun too! You can play various games with apples
(grown and kept fresh until winter by modern industry), and decorate
the technological objects that have been bringing you so much joy this
year - from your PC to TV set to your car. You can also dress up as
Solar Cause and bring your children (together with sounds "He! He! He!"
- an expression of playfulness and the chemical sign for Helium) stories
about the real source of life and energy on this little planet.
A figure of Luna, a friendly companion of Solar Cause, may bring an
additional participant into your performance, and tell the spectators
that the best effects result from long-term collaboration of real-life
forces, and that they can learn in every detail how this works, understand
the world they live in, and make it still better with the combined power
of their own minds and bodies.

  Merry Newtonmas, everybody!

(*) See also the story of Ex-Mass and Solar Cause by Tom 0. Morrow at
http://members.aol.com/t0morrow/Ex-Mass.html

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Alexander Chislenko <http://www.lucifer.com/~sasha/home.html>
Extropy Online <http://www.extropy.org/eo/index.htm>
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Received on Wed Dec 23 13:59:32 1998