The Real War On Christmas, And Everything Else

It is at this time of the year that we hear talk from some corners that there is a "war on Christmas".  The enemy offensives range from failure to make the appropriate greeting to the decoration of chain store coffee cups. Needless to say, these charges are absurd on their face.  However, the one truth in this emotional mess, which is really just a triangulation away from the fact that those making the charges have long since forgotten what they believe, is that there is indeed a perversion of something at work. The nature of that perversion, as we will see, is much older than it seems, but also made new for the post-modern era.

Strictly speaking, the vary holiday itself is a perversion of the much older observance of the rebirth of the sun, something quite important when sunlight directly effects your food supply, as well as your biology. It is no wonder it was venerated as a god. Things that have power over us are always and have always been objects of worship. It has only been in the recent past that we have ignored this through our acceptance of materialistic explanations for reality, which, although useful for solving problems, fail to answer the questions belief in the supernatural actually did. One can explain the how of the mechanism of birth, life, and death, as well as the mechanics of the rest of the natural world materialistically. That does not answer the why. It has been the case for all of recorded history that we have felt there needed to be a why. Art, culture, war, lust, anger, love, our greatest atrocities and our greatest good come from how we answer the why. 

It is a fact that the ability of the human brain to perceive time has made us aware of our own coming death. In light of this knowledge, how else are we to function but by finding meaning?  The traditional answer to the question of meaning has always been  to find it outside of the self. That is why people have always believed in gods, but it is also why we believe in heroes, and why we inflate our own egos to cover our inability to live up to our deepest wishes. Materialism did not solve this problem. If anything, it gave us an excuse to be ignorant of ourselves, by forgetting why we believed in the gods in the first place, and forgetting that, no mater how much we deny it, we all want to know why. We answer it now subconsciously and in so doing allow for our attempts to be perverted. 

The problem now is the perversion, which this little "war" is but one small aspect. The issue with the gods is we did not kill them. They never died, and never left us no matter how much we ignored them, and they continue to demand sacrifice.  What is our mass consumption of things we do not need and that, the production of which both enslaves people producing it and damages our very planet, but a blood sacrifice? The banality of evil is an economy of scale and we are all part of it, which is what makes it banal. To use another example from current events, many ancient societies practiced infanticide. Now consider that the majority of those making the choice to abort do so, both out of lack of other economical choices, and out of anxiety for the future. What is this, but a sacrifice of the weak and of the future unto certain comfort now? This was always the basis for child sacrifice in the ancient world. Yet another example. What is rape culture, but an attempt to demonstrate dominance and validate meaning? You think this started with the modern world? Near universal child abuse is well documented in pre-modern societies, and it has nothing to do with patriarchy. The goddesses had their temple prostitutes also. Do you really think they were all willing victims? 

The point is, ignoring the darkness doesn't make it go away. In fact it allows it to proliferate beyond anything we thought possible before. Meanwhile, how could all the gods be bad? But we have ignored the good ones as assuredly as we have ignored the evil. It does not mean they do not get their way also, but doing good requires participation and devotion. Evil simply requires complacency. This is because the natural progression of all things is to chaos and destruction, and then rebirth. That is one of the reasons why the ancients took the changing of the season so seriously. It is an  example of rebirth. But what does participation and devotion look like? Simply put, the dark gods do now, as they ever have, demand sacrifice of the weak, and of the future unto certainty now. The good ones demand sacrifice of yourself unto yourself, and unto the world, both for your own freedom and the good of all the world. 

It is the the case the the natural order of things eventually trends toward justice. However, it is the work of wisdom and courage who the ancients named Athena, to shorten the distance between here and justice. It is the work of those who wish to see this final outcome to be comforted by that same wisdom and courage and to continue in the face of the darkness. 

The Tools Of Ignorance

It is said that you do not have to be the sharpest tool in the tool shed, just a tool, so long as you are a useful tool. 

If this is the case, ignorance is vindicated by all of her children on a daily basis owing to the degrees of distraction the modern world is constantly addicted to. One week we are assailed with images of a woman who used to be a man, and in nearly the same instant exposed to cries of indignation for valor stolen by the same. This, of course, completely ignored the view of the individual put front and center, and whose narrative was so completely coopted by other interests towards no clear end other than more outrage. The next week we are assailed with accusations of someone posing to be an ethnicity she is not. For personal gain none the less, and not that being the above was ever a choice aspired to for personal gain. So much has been lost by so many for being the wrong color. But it is the most recent events that prove the degree of shock and awe required for the shortest period of depth and focus. 

Future readers will be able to look back in history to identify what happened only a few days before this entry was made, and thus I will not go into depth here apart from to say in agreement with anyone else with the slightest bit of reason that we have a problem. 

However, the extent of my agreement will end there. Only a few short days after so much evil waste of life and we are once again throne to the winds of chaos and distraction. We are even now assailed with talk of gun control, and systemic racism. We are told we have a gaping and ignored wound. We are made to believe this is a huge problem, which is no batter now than when we first began. These are indeed signals in the noise, but the constant feedback loop creates only more noise. Gun control, systemic racism, and ingrained hatred are indeed grave problems, but they are so in the same way a high fever is a problem caused by an underlying illness. They are symptoms of a deeper malady, one that has its roots in the same distraction that causes us to flit from one outrage to the other while all the wile never actually paying attention and never actually doing anything. Never really caring beyond a viral repost, or declaration of solidarity that doesn't require walking out the front door. 

Our deeper malady, our underlying medical condition as a society is the glorification and passionate devotion to ignorance. In mass we have become very good tools of ignorance indeed. We love to point to public figures and ridicule them for their absurd religious views, or their dramatic falls from grace, while ignoring the fact that we are the ones who lifted them up in the first place, or at least allowed it to be so. We allow the debate to continue on that more control will lead to less violence, while never backing down from extreme positions that will never be supported. We talk of systemic racism while ignoring what goes on every day and night on the other side of our home towns. We do what feels right rather than what is right. We support emotions rather than reasonable policies. We act out of emotion rather than even creating reasonable policy. We look to the closest relative advantage, rather than considering the great disadvantage in such a short sighted view. We unite is mass outrage against spectacular acts of evil, while never stopping to examine the banal evils we engage in every day. Do you really think that cotton you are wearing is free trade? The children in Uzbekistan who more likely than not picked it would disagree if they knew what free trade was. How about those rare earth components in you iPhone? Where do you think they came from? How about those drugs you insist are your legal and civil right to consume? How many people died as a result of the money you paid for them? What about those girls on the Internet? No one is so open in every sense of the term for no reason. What about the gas in you car? The water in your cup? The food on your table? Do you really think your existence is a victimless crime? 

There are second and third order effects to everything. There are many more shades than black and white. And there are a million and one excuses as to how it got this way and to explain whose fault it really is. 

While there are indeed second and third order effects to everything and there are more shades than black and white, for anyone who truly cares, who will do rather than repost, the only one to blame is you. Grand policy and sweeping legislation may be beneficial, even needed. Nothing though is more required every moment of every day than the involvement of the singe individual for good. 

One does not have to be the sharpest tool, but you do have to walk out the front door to be a tool for good. The objective isn't emotional satisfaction. It is justice.  

Remember The Past. It Dictates The Future

Etched into flesh as if on stone walls are the memories that inform our present and dictate our future.

Some break us down, and some lift us up. Some we will never escape and some we wish had never ended. Regardless of the nature of our past, its marks we will never remove. It is a matter of choice and training to ensure that these marks inform our present and dictate our future in a positive direction. 

Examples of sacrifice and suffering endured in the cause of something outside of ourselves. Given enough time, these are the memories we hold most dear because they are the times we were tested, rose to the occasion and overcame. Facing the reality of our own mortality, we faced the darkness, did not hide, and became something more. 

Then there are other memories that no amount of reason will ever make right. They are the manifestations of the evil endemic to the world that no one really escapes and some are demanded to experience the full measure of. One does not make it right. They experience and survive, or they do not. 

However, on the other side of the past, regardless of the characterization of that past, here we still are. Remember the good and and the bad, and take pride where it is due. To sacrifice is an honor not readily experienced by most. 

To serve with those doing the same and more is a greater honor still. 

Making a Difference

I find it important to repeat myself at times. Repetition builds familiarity. Familiarity breads mastery. And it is mastery over specific things we seek to accomplish here. In specific, we seek mastery over the winds and high seas of chaos that threaten ever to detour us all, from mass society, to the single individual, from the light of reason and justice.

The world we currently live in is not getting more peaceful. The looming threat of a localized disease epidemic turning into a generalized pandemic, the rise of an extremist movement that hearkens back to several millennia of human history we would happily forget, and the continuation of inter state politics by other means we now see in our old adversarial area of influence. We have options as to how to deal with this. Succumbing to low grade panic with minimal commitment may be the most readily available method to respond.

On the Other hand, and this is where I repeat myself, forgo debates about policy and the need to blame elected officials for the current conditions we face. Take responsibility as the single individual for the world you live in.

The winds of chaos beat upon us all, but it is ever easy to ignore them via a low grade mass panic when they are far off.

This only masks the banal evils close by. It is not by the might of some overarching government policy that that homeless man on the street corner is going to get someone to treat him like a human being, and it is not by government power (because that has hence to for failed) that that street walker who is probably under the age of 18 is going to get anyone to treat her like anything more than a sex toy at worst and criminal at best.

Rather, as I have said before, do not be a slave to fashion. Do not go along with the popular anxiety of the hour. These only annul us to awareness of what is going on around us all the time.

Lift up modern society and there you will see the underbelly. The real world is not clean, from a distance, or from close by. But what is is is an opportunity for the single individual to change reality for someone more a victim of the world we live in than that individual.

It is for things like this that, if we would allow ourselves to delve into, more meaning and power would be found than 10,000,000 hours spent fearing whatever is the fashion of the day to fear.

Defend the weak. Insist on justice for the downcast, and do not allow fear of the distant to distract you from the work at hand. These are the precepts by which the single individual becomes the agent of change in his/her world. Isn't that what we all wanted to do anyway, make a difference?

Don't Hide

What you don't know will indeed kill you. But it is the emotional response we substitute for what we do know, but refuse to trust that leads to insanity.

In the face of the exotic and other and terrifying, it seems that no amount of rational evaluating can overcome the visceral terror that seems to naturally ensue, shortly to prevent all rational evaluation, and to infect the human thought process more surly than a physical contagion ever would. 

Nothing travels faster than bad news, and at the same time nothing seems to be harder to cure than irrational fear.  

We try hard to ascribe meaning and derive something of substance from everything that causes us panic. However, the majority of the time, it all comes down to not being able to distinguish the signal from the noise. 

There are many ways to deal with irrational fear, but the surest way to not cure it is to hide. As with nearly everything else, playing the victim is the quickest path to perceptions becoming realities. 

In the face of that which causes you panic, take the initiative. Charge strait in. Turn the tables and determine your own course. You will be amazed at what you can do when you have to.