A TRUE END OF YEAR HOLIDAY STORY THAT JUST HAPPENED ON THE INTERNET

BETWEEN COURTENAY BARNETT AND RICHARD JOHN STAPLETON

CB to RJS and Others December 20, 2019 6:45 PM

AND

Peace to all Men and Women of Good Will (and may the evil ones all go to the burning “Bush” and “Blairly” be lost forever)

To Our Muslim Brothers

SALAAMU ALAIKUM


To Our Hebrew Brothers and sisters

Happy Chanukah


To my African brothers and sisters in and out of Africa

Happy Kwanza and Kwanzaa


To our atheist and agnostic brothers and sisters

Have a good day

( and if you are of a group that I forgot or did not specifically mention – good will to you nevertheless, but send me your details and you will be included next time in the list above – promise)

And to Our Christian brothers and sisters


MERRY CHRISTMAS
CHRIST IS BORN
. . . + . . .
. . # . .
. . ### . . .
. .”#:. .:##”##:. .:#” . .
. . “####”###”####” .
. “#:. .:#”###”#:. .:#” . . .
. “#########”#########” . .
. “#:. “####”###”####” .:#”. .
. . “#######””##”##””#######” .
.”##”#####”#####”##” . .
.”#:. … .:##”###”###”##:. … .:#” .
. “#######”##”#####”##”#######” . .
. . “#####””#######””#####” . .
. ” 000 ” . .
. .. __000___ . . .
/. 000 ./|
/_______/ |
| Barnett| /
|_______|/

This email is sent as a “love gift” for Christmas 2019. It is also a “health gift” – the best gift a human can have – compliments of Dr. Courtenay.

There are six  gifts in this package.The inner health gift.

1. The inner health gift

We unwittingly ingest parasites at times from vegetable and other foods. Normally our system will deal naturally with these, but there is a way in which we can improve our inner health. The papaya fruit is a fruit with dual healing properties. The papaya is a natural meat tenderizer. This also means that it has properties that are beneficial for our digestive system. It will literally melt what we have in our digestive tract, and in its natural state it is absorbed quickly by our body. So, eat a complete papaya once a week, and you are assured that it will do its cleansing best in your system. Next, do not throw away the little black seeds – eat them. The reason for this is that the seeds have anti-parasitic properties. So, about once every two weeks eat a handful of papaya seeds. You can dry and store these and have them in your kitchen cupboard, and make this a part of your regular diet.

2.  The healthy nerves health gift.

There is a fruit that grows in the Caribbean known colloquially as the ‘sour sop’. It is green with a soft spiny exterior, and has white flesh on the inside. It is used to make a drink, which when taken has natural properties that are good for the nerves. Some of the other health properties can be found at this web site: http://hubpages.com/hub/Medicinal-Benefits-of-Soursop

3.   The good night’s sleep and clean skin health gift.

Fever grass – also known as lemon grass – makes a tasty tea, and as a lotion does wonders for the skin. It naturally assists with a good night’s sleep. When rubbed on the skin as a lotion, it has anti-fungal properties and naturally cleanses the skin. Dr. Courtenay recommends “Country House products” out of Jamaica, for this lotion:[email protected]

4. The overall good health tip.

Try consuming the Moringa plant. I have it on island and I make a tea from the leaves which Idrink. It has been scientifically proven to have a wide range of beneficial properties. Rea here, for more information:-

http://www.edlagman.com/moringa/moringa-health-benefits.htm

5. The clean teeth tip. 

Use the peel of the banana on your teeth. Rub the inside on your teeth. You will find that any yellowstains or discolouration is naturally removed, and this method does not in any way damage the enamel. 

6. The healthy body tip

Exercise two to three times a week – nuff said.

Now, these six (6) tips are worth a million dollars in total N.B. US and not Jamaican dollars ( i.e. measured in dollars – each tip brings to you a total of US$250,000). Therefore, for free you are receiving a very valuable present which you should treasure. Dr. Courtenay has packaged these six gifts in this exclusive package, and is sharing this special gift only with you ( well – to be truthful, with all my family and friends, because it really is a lot cheaper than buying conventional presents).

Disclaimer: The natural products are made by God, so if any one does not work, you are free to sue Him. I am available for all retainers ( having sued a Chief Justice – I will ratchet the challenge up to the high heavens).  The exercise tip is left totally to you  and  your use of your body, so if you want to over-stress your heart, then don’t blame me , nor should your estate bother me with any law suit.

Comment: If my day job does not work out, then via Barnett Enterprises Inc. these love gifts will be packaged and marketed globally at the heavily discounted price of $2.50 each. But, for now just appreciate and accept at the true value with all the extra zeros added on, and remember – that we can’t put a true value on good health.

These gifts come in our standard internet package, which requires:-

1.       That you open

2.       That you read

3.       That you apply your mind and not the delete button

These gifts are meant as an instructive and easy to use way towards better health – valued at least at a million dollars in total. Have a happy and healthy Christmas 2019, and even healthier new year.

Love,

Dr. Courtenay 

RJS to CB December 21, 2019 12:24 AM

Hello Courtenay.  Apparently you have had good parenting for all your ego states and you have a winner script. You are one of the lucky ones. I too am one of the lucky ones despite having been poorly parented. My father was a high functioning autistic and my mother was chronically depressed, both having high IQs. I am where I am largely because of being programmed to seek out good professional help. Born with a serious scoliosis and other bone problems I had to lie in bed three months during the summer of my fifteenth year lying on my stomach ninety percent of the time in a body cast after s spinal fusion operation, that prevented me from becoming permanently paralyzed from the waist down, which enabled me to live without back pain. Now seventy-nine years old I am sometimes amazed I made it as far as i have. I read on the internet a few months ago a doctor about fifty saying he did not want to live past seventy-five since life really was not worth living past that age for most people. I think he was about right but life past seventy-five is not that bad for me, not bad enough that I want to euthanize myself yet, but not good enough that I worry about exercise and what I eat and drink to live longer. I basically live from moment to moment doing what I have to do to get some satisfaction, dopamine spurts in the brain, one satisfaction being thinking I have helped someone feel, think, and behave better so as to live with more satisfaction than they otherwise would have. Not thinking it’s possible that any god such as those described by the religions you list could exist, I nevertheless hope that should there actually be some sort of loving spiritual thing eternally existing after I die, if there is any sort of human-like consciousness left after death, which I doubt there will be, that any such thing will at least give me a little credit for the good I have done on Earth, despite my not thinking any god described by mainstream Earthian religions can exist. Best wishes for an enjoyable end of the year holiday, or any other holiday anytime anything might cause you to have one. Cheers, Richard

CB to RJS December 21, 2019 9:24 AM

Dear Richard,

Thanks for sharing with me.

You have indeed had challenges to meet and nevertheless done extremely well in life.

I am off today to Jamaica to spend the holiday with family.

We will communicate further.

Later,

Courtenay 

CB to RJS December 21, 2019 7:12 PM

Here is my reply to your God( un-Godly?) reflections.

I am fully aware of who we are as human beings; the challenge is to deal with us as we are. So here ( I wrote it several years ago) and here share:-

http://www.daniellesgarden.org/dw-myth.htm

Myth – Danielle’s Garden Danielle’s Garden. TOWER HILL EDUCATIONAL FUND A/C 20067 Bank of Nova Scotia 1-3 Knutsford Blvd. kingston 5, Jamaica. E-mail: INFO@ DaniellesGarden.org . MYTH AS WORLD INSPIRATION www.daniellesgarden.org

RJS to CB December 23, 2019 10:12 PM

Hello Courtenay

Wow. You had great parents. It’s a beautiful garden they planted based on and dedicated to humanity with the best of sentiments, thoughts, and ideals, a great legacy. Thanks for sharing.

I enjoyed and appreciated your essay “Myth as Inspiration.” As usual it like your other writing I have read is well referenced and reasoned, artfully written, and rational, interesting, and informative. I agree with the notion that the development of myths such as those in your article were helpful and maybe necessary for human survival.  I have advocated for the renewal of similar processes along the lines of anthropologist Michael Adzema’s thinking cited in my essay “The Evolution of Spaceship Earth, Inc.” which is posted on the masthead of the Effective Learning Report.  

Christmases were not merry in the immediate family I was inevitably caused to be born in and those negative feelings get “rubberbanded” in my psyche every year caused by Christmas. I have a green sweatshirt with the words “Bah Humbug” printed on the front of it I wore again the other day. Regardless, my wife and I do Christmas rituals and she gets truly merry about it at times. We buy gifts for friends and family and ourselves, especially for my son and his wife and our three grandchildren in Vermont. Debbye and I had an enjoyable Christmas dinner with friends yesterday at the Country Club. I ordered sweet tea to drink and a friend told me I could get a glass of wine on Sunday. I told her no, that this was Sunday, and Jesus’s birthday was only a few days away.  Another friend at table, an Episcopalian, said “We drink real wine at communion.” And I said, “Yeah, but we Methodists always drank grape juice for communion, and I know Jesus may have served and drunk real wine with his friends, even at ‘The Last Supper’, but I think I will pass this time.” She smirked a bit, others raised their eyebrows and smiled some, and the dinner pleasantly progressed.

While I have no problem with cultural myths and rituals that promote peace and satisfaction I do have a problem with the politics of organized mainstream religions, Buddhism being the least harmful in my opinion. Most large organized religions are aggressive, coercive, manipulative, divisive, and exploitative, just what capitalism needs, and they encourage an I’m OK–You’re NOT OK attitude among members with respect to non-members, which in many cases leads to hatred and war. In my opinion these religions do more harm than good.  In many cases they dumb members down, absolving them of responsibility for rationally talking action to solve existential problems, turning them into passive gullible sheep, since they are taught to believe an all powerful all loving god answers prayers and will forgive and save them no matter how much they fuck things up if they profess to love and glorify him in religious ceremonies and pay his priests, preachers, and such to build churches, temples, mosques and various edifices to awe and intimidate more people into joining (Notre Dame comes to mind), thereby increasing the power of the religion overall, helping it win competing with other religions for prestige and the top dog position in the religion industry of the nation, in some countries almost eradicating competing religions over time. I lived in Turkey three months in 1982 and was astounded sightseeing around southeast Turkey near Adana where I lived that the area contained numerous well-preserved historic Christian churches, one founded by Paul of Tarsus of New Testament fame, at Tarsus today, with interesting frescoes and preserved pews, altars, and such; but there were no Christians in the region, the original Christians having long since been driven away.

As a child I thought Sunday school and church, and the Bible, were fantasies or irrelevant. My mother saw to it I went to Sunday school and church and I conformed but I more or less tuned it out. Those were my true feelings and thoughts on the matter of organized religion as I experienced it in the environment into which I was accidentally caused to be born without my consent. My grandfather on my mother’s side was a Methodist minister, and he wanted me to become a minister. He was about as heretical as I was about Christian dogma and doctrine, not believing in the virgin birth, and telling me “There is not an old man with a long white beard sitting up there in the sky on white puffy clouds with a walking stick in his hand looking down on us.” 

I have always had a problem “willingly suspending disbelief” having read few novels, considering it a waste of time to read something as if real that someone just made up out of thin air. Regardless, I have been writing a “novel” off and on for about six years, an allegory, which is more factual than fictional. My problem with the novel now is figuring out how to end it. How much should I lie? If I want to maximize my chances of selling a few copies I probably should make up a happy ending. To make the book sell via word of mouth I probably should tell readers that what they have just read will cause them to spend eternity in a heavenly paradise. On the other hand, at the rate I’m going most likely the book will never get finished and published, so the ethical question of how to end it is moot.

It seems the closer I get to death’s door at age seventy-nine the more intellectually honest I get about what I really feel and think, proving the less I have to lose the more intellectually honest I get. I would never have said to my students in class what I have written here. It’s always been risky to speak honestly in public about what you really feel and think about religion, as my Methodist minister grandfather told me, even, I might add, if you are retired with a good defined benefits pension, as you slowly but surely walk up the sidewalk closer and closer to death’s door. 

Regardless, time may also be running out for dysfunctional technologies, economic systems, political systems, political parties, religions, and cultural myths. Unfortunately the possibility exists today that there will be serious hell to pay if serious feeling, thinking, and behaving corrections are not made fairly soon in all Earthian human populations.  Human caused global warming and climate change, a massive global economic collapse, and nuclear bombs can bring Earthian human affairs to a screeching halt.

Best wishes,

Richard

CB to RJS December 24, 2019 9:50 AM

“Human caused global warming, a massive global economic collapse, and nuclear bombs can bring Earthian human affairs to a screeching halt.” 

Sad – and – I agree.

CB to RJS December 24 10:20 AM

This man is a college mate of mine; he is now a Professor of world religions…

http://jamaica-gleaner.com/article/letters/20191224/letter-day-let-us-still-be-thankful-christmas

Letter of the Day | Let us still be thankful for Christmas | Letters | Jamaica Gleaner Although there are these dubious associations, and mythological elements surrounding Christmas, let us still eat, drink, be merry, and be thankful that we’re still alive; and that we have family and friends around us during this season. jamaica-gleaner.com

RJS to CB December 24, 2019 11:11 AM

Agree

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* COURTENAY BARNETT is a graduate of London University. His areas of study were economics, political science and international law. He has been a practising lawyer for over thirty years, has been arrested for defending his views, has been subjected to death threats, and has argued public interest and human rights cases. He has published several articles in the Effective Learning Report. He lives and works in the Caribbean.

* RICHARD JOHN STAPLETON, a certified transactional analyst, is an emeritus professor of entrepreneurship, organizational behavior, and business policy at Georgia Southern University. He has a BS, MBA, and PhD from Texas Tech University. His areas of study were economics, organizational behavior, and management science. He is the founder, editor, and publisher of the Effective Learning Report.