The Circular Ideological Spectrum

In theory, ideological positions fall along a spectrum.  In practice, it is more a loop. The more extreme, the more a mirror of the opposition. This is intuitive for anyone aware of history, or detached enough from the current Right/Left dichotomy in the West at least to grasp. The historical example is how much Nazism Stalinism, although mortally opposed, were in practice merely different shades of the same brutal, totalitarianism, attempting to build utopia out of a mountain of skulls, and failing at the cost of tens of millions of lives.

In terms of the current Right/Left dichotomy, there is little to practically separate an actual "Alt Right" White Supremacist from an actual violent Anarcho Communist. Both espouse violence in favor of debate, forgo personal responsibility in all areas of life except in the practice of extreme ideology, and squarely place the blame for perceived ills on others, not to mention both are fundamentally detached from reality. 

Any addiction, including to ideology is unhealthy. It substitutes fantasy for truth, and destroys the agency of its victim. In the case of ideology, it is the beam in the eye of one trying to remove a speck from the opposition, or in this case the black hood on the one trying to remove the white bed sheet from the other.  Fortunately, vocal minorities in both directions do not generally speak for the majority of people simply more concerned with their day to day lives than media sophistry and rhetorical noise. The ratings though do seem to benefit. 

On the other hand, the hidden deception, far more banal because it passes as virtuous, possesses those claiming a position of faith in opposition to one of the two extremes. In the West, this often means Christians who may perceive themselves as boldly opposing injustice when they decry the rise of Fascism, Communism, Islamism, whatever happens to be readily and obviously worth opposing. Evil must indeed be opposed by the person of faith. It must be named, defined, its victims protected, if need by at the greatest risk to the person of faith. We rightly remember those from the past who have done this as heroes. However, just as ideological extremes mirror each other the farther apart they become, so too does moral outrage become moral panic the more fashionable the object of that initial outrage. 

Both extremism, and moral panic are fundamentally disconnected from the complexity of the world. Both grossly oversimplify day to day existence. Both are evil manipulations of the human tendency for availability bias, and both are far more in keeping with mob behavior than heroic courage. Furthermore, both are fundamentally lacking in introspection. 

For the person of faith, the beam to be removed is the deception that the methods of the City of Man can bring the outcomes of the City of God. It is possible to work to good effect in the City of Man, but using its methods to further the latter will turn in into the former far more surely than the alternative.  Evil must be opposed, and preferably by rules it does not play and cannot beat. Leftist and Rightist extremism are both ridiculous at best and abhorrently sinister at worst. However, using one to combat the other, focusing on one while ignoring the other, or allying with the methods of one to confront the other, no matter how noble on the surface, is nothing short of moral prostitution, and idolatry. We do not look to win the game, but to destroy it. It is not that such idealism seeks too much, but rather too little. 

The methods of the City of God are faith, hope, and love. Forgiveness, reconciliation, compassion, mercy. It is ridiculous to expect these virtues from the City of Man, neither is it its place to exhibit them. The best it can do is equality before its laws. To think otherwise ignores history. The methods of the City of God though are firmly the responsibility, and unique capability of the individual and community of faith. Even in a totalitarian regime, the most important problems to fix are often right next door in the form of those needing shelter.  

In general, if it's easy to condemn, it isn't the deeper problem. Moral courage generally means taking a stand that actually assumes risk. Both ideological extremism and moral panic are hubris fueled mass self deceptions. The real extremism is to put childish utopianism behind us, and seek to change what we have the opportunity to. Perhaps with faith in these smaller works, greater ones will be opened. The homeless alcoholic, teen mother, depressed family member, etc need your help as much as the nebulous masses.  You will sooner see results with such skin in the game.          

A Few Nights In Bangkok

Walking the streets of a metropolis. It could be anywhere in the world. This time it's in Southeast Asia. It was The City of Angeles to be specific. For me, the mystique of the exotic, other, different has long since worn off. It could be Los Angeles at this point. It could be anywhere because I am struck now by the visceral understanding of what I have intellectually known for some time. Strip away birth place, opportunity, privilege, life experience, a few few good choices and a few bad, and there is not that much different between anyone, from the street beggar dangling a bit of rice to draw a rat out of its hole to the frat boy chugging a nati light at whatever elite institution. They are both filling a void. There isn't that much different between the Hi So socialite speeding down the way in whatever European Sports Car, and the street prophet in San Francisco preaching of the end times. They both live for the spotlight. Even when survival is at stake, we seek meaning above all else.

Then there are the harder workers too. The prostitutes, many supporting their children. It seems most people anywhere will do anything for their children. Then there are the street children themselves, capable of sophistication and manipulation that would make a politician blush. Never assume youth means lack of intelligence. There are savants in every slum in the world, as surely as there are child prodigies getting into elite institutions.

There are the street walkers, the poorer country refugees, bar girls/boys, the tourists for sex and to discover themselves. The homeless, the well off. The men and women doing hard work to bring a better future. The men and women chasing away the pain, and those just floating through. 

I walk on by observing everything, and trying to admire nothing. And then I hear it, and in the way it always comes as a small enough voice, but one that I imagine echos across eternity. "I am here. I am love. This is my world, and you may say this is my Father's world". And just like that, the visceral understanding hits. 

Strip away cultural biases, historical context, language, upbringing, experience, everything else that differentiates, and there it is. Everyone from the street hooker, homeless drug addict, single mother, gang member, government official, religious leader, academic, CEO, etc, we are all made in the image of the Creator. Everyone you meet is made in the image of Creator, including you. 

Now consider that same Creator never left. That Creator was our Father and our Mother. That Creator made a point of entering the world as creation. That Creator had skin in the game. That creator died. 

And He is Risen

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.  

Strange Dreams

The following is an interesting account of an adventure had by someone I know, which borders on the insane, but perhap the readers of this space are into that sort of thing. 

I found myself in seated meditation in a temple with oppressive tropical heat carried on the breeze through the hall. A sent of curry and fish oil carried on the same breeze. The rounded script recording the sutras on dried banana leaves, carved such so as to not destroy the medium gave away the language. I was in Burma, and my saffron robes give away my station. I am a monk, seated in meditation, searching for freedom from suffering.

I sat and I chanted. Breath in. Breath out. My pronunciation of the ancient words in a continuous and ever complexifying rhythum indicated a mastery of the practices of my sect. I strove to detach. Thought. No thought. Focus. No focus. Mind. No mind.

I had walked this path before. I had walked it for many years at this point. The final objective known for what I believed, but not for anything here to fore experienced or seen. And then a trance. And then a vision.

I was transported into another state of awareness. Perhaps not elevated, but perception none the less altered. Perhaps relaxed to see what was already there, and what had always been there. The distractions of physical samsara faded. I saw instead what lay beyond them, and it was yet even more suffering. The desert of gray below and in the sky stretched to the horizon. If anything, the view was more troubling in the absence of the physical attachments I had strived so long to detach from. In something so close to a void, it had always been assumed one would reach freedom from attachment. But here more than anything I was made aware of my own attachment to mortality. Even beyond the physical I was still bound to death and rebirth. Or perhaps I was simply bound to death in this place so bland and between light and dark, so devoid and yet so vivid as to call into question the deepest fundamentals of what we believed about extinguishing the flame. About Nirvana.

Perhaps I was in this trance forever. Perhaps only a few moments. The shift was as extreme as a flame being extinguished, only in revers. A light had appeared on the horizon. Or maybe it was the horizon. So massive the thing as to transcend the notions of time and space so normally visible in the physical samsara. It was as if it transcended ages, not only worlds. It was a ship, a vessel I knew in one look from the third eye could hold all below Nirvana. Perhaps it could hold that too. I would have fled, had I not forgotten my own body and had I not felt some very distant, yet very deep memory triggered by the vision.

The ship sat on the clouds above, which did not seem so gray anymore in the shadow of something so radiant. And then a voice. "See and understand. I have brought a ship great enough to hold the worlds. And so it shall for all below shall be raised above to Golden City beyond samsara. Beyond Nirvana. Beyond all comprehension. " And then I saw before me what I had only understood before to be an instrument of death. A cross of wood. And before it, a river of blood. I heard again, "all things in the worlds must die to be raised to life again. The cycle of death and rebirth you know well. I have died so that all the worlds my rise forever to the Golden City. Come and bathe in my blood, which will flow through all the worlds." I waded into the river, and I heard again, "I am the one you have heard about. The one you have been waiting for. The one the Buddhas spoke of. I am the Mesia."

At this I descended into the river, and all went dark. I awoke to find myself thrashing about at my desk, the sound of the highway outside, and my alarm clock about to go off.

Changing Seasons

It is nearing the end of the year. The season has shifted, and with it, life has made itself more scarce. Whether it be the trees barren of leaves, the grass dead in the frost, animals in hibernation, the birds flying over the horizon, or simply the sun lower in the sky in the interludes between long cold nights. The whole world dies to one degree or another and each element in it's own way. And then, it comes back to life more forcefully than before.

Eons of experience points to the seasons eventually changing, life returning, and the cycle continuing. It is the natural order of things, and a process we have long come to expect and take for granted. Those who went before from the majority of cultures found spiritual significance in the changing patterns. Some spoke of thin spaces as the seasons changed. The natural and the super natural getting closer as we were driven closer to each other to avoid the cold. Death always brings near the other. Some saw the need to placate the gods with blood sacrifices when they sensed them approaching in these times of shifts to darkness. 

Newer faiths capitalized on the older customs and adapted them to convey new messages. Whether Christianity, Islam, or consumerism, the innate urge to commune with the other is a powerful force, and one for which we still sacrifice greatly for the chance to turn what is into what be wish it could be. 

Some would see the rampant consumption and mass placating of social anxieties to be noise confusing us from the signal  for the "reason for the season". I see it as something coming from our deepest being. We wish more than anything else to be connected, and most of all to the Divine Other. Whether we recognize it or not, it is as fundamental as breath. Nearly as fundamental is our notion that to get something, you must give something. Thus the sacrifice.

As with everything though, there is a deeper pattern. Something over the horizon. A longer trajectory. 

All things die. However when death passes, life reemerges more forcefully than before, as surely as the grass after the thaw, and cherry blossoms in spring. It is such on more than the obvious level. We sense the thin spaces. Our traditions originated from fundamental ideas about the world. Even if the original meanings have long since been covered in noise, we still sense it. 

I commemorates this time in memory of when the Divine stepped through the thin space into the physical, soon to die, and then, to rise. And with this resurrection, the whole world will follow. The ultimate winter, and the ultimate spring to follow. Such is the sacrifice all our attempts only pointed to. Carried on the winds of ultimate compassion, there is a ship large enough to hold all the world. 

Death is still among us and overtakes all things. Belief in that not yet seen requires faith. We are creatures of faith regardless of its object. 

I chose to have faith in the notion that the true height of mastery is not to bring good from good, but to turn that which is broken and dying to even greater good. This is what I see as the nights are long and cold and life retreats. This is what I look forward to when spring comes again. 

The Original Sin

It is common, and perhaps even an ingrained habit of the human condition to confuse symptoms with underlying causes. The real issues arises when you start exclusively treating/avoiding the symptoms and ignore the causes. Who ever heard of the black mold infestation in your shower going away because you just didn't go in there, or the check engine light fixing itself just because you stopped paying attention to it?

However, we do the same thing with much more serious issues all the time. We stay in jobs we hate because we lack courage to know what we truly want, and so we medicate the symptoms of our depression with all manner diversions. We stay in bad relationships, or avoid them all together because the status quo is less fear inducing than dealing with why we cannot love ourselves in the first place. We triangulate the pain and trauma of lingering emotional and spiritual injury away into surface conflicts with family, friends and the general public, or we medicate the pain away with whatever addiction so suits our fancy, preferably something that shadows the deepest longings of our hearts and deepest wishes of our psyches, which was what was injured in the first place.

The deepest human fear is not death. It is not being known. And yet to avoid the pain of disappointment at taking the risk to be known and possibly failing, we do all we can to avoid it in the first place, and instead substitute a shadowy approximation of who we think we are. We pose.

Because posing is ultimately an outgrowth of insecurities our deepest psyches cannot shake, the pain never really goes away and the need to medicate the symptoms continues. Apart from those who are simply and truly evil in that, due to brain damage, they have no moral compass, the vast majority of deviant behavior is nothing more than a symptom of the great divide between who we really are and our fear and shame of the same. 

The original sin is not the horde of external symptoms, and lascivious fleshly desires, whatever those are. The original sin is allowing false dichotomies to divide and fragment our living souls. It wasn't in black and white called the tree of the knowledge of good and evil for nothing. Of course there is good and evil in the world. I would not be writing if it were not so. However, the embrace of the same in favor of embracing life causes a fragmentation of our hearts and minds, which is only satisfied by either further fragmenting and  compartmentalizing the vast majority of reality to protect that which is seen as good, while that which is seen as evil seems never to fully disappear, kind of like the black mold infestation in your shower, or one can embrace life and thus address the underlying root cause of the issue. This however, requires courage and acceptance of who one truly is. It is only after this step is taken that whatever perversions have posed in your place can be corrected to their original form, which was is not perverse. 

We are ever presented with the option to stay backstage posing as players in some shadow of existence, or step out from behind the curtain and go live. 

Christmas

Good intentions are not the same things as good results. The actual result of something is more important than the form that thing took. Likewise, wisdom is vindicated by all of her children.

The modern world has a way of confusing ultimate and lasting good with what makes you feel good right now. Though there is nothing wrong with immediate pleasure and comfort, the experience is non-benign if divorced from deeper realities. It is this disaggregation of our surface experiences from deeper realities, and subsequent compartmentalization of different aspects of our lives that leads to many of our personal and relational problems.

At the same time, good results must be recognized for what they are. This is all a roundabout way of getting to the point, which is that despite all of the stress, chaos, confusion, and sometimes loneliness, solitude and depression that are a part of this time of year; despite the rampant materialism, political correctness, and loss of perspective as to the original meaning of the season, even if the original meaning was a week of festivities dedicated to the god Cronus, the ultimate result is what matters. 

The preponderance of us are drawn closer to those we love and care about, and are given cause to reflect on that which we consider meaningful. There is joy, there is happiness, even if there is sorrow. 

It is for this last point it is most fitting that some of us celebrate the coming of the Divine in human form on this day. In the midst of pain and suffering, joy and hope, not apart from the darkness, but in the midst of it. The light does indeed shine in the darkness and the darkness will not overcome it. It is beyond a name and does not require recognition to be vindicated in all of our actions, for all of our actions that are good find their ultimate source and meaning in It. There is only one circle of love, friendship, happiness, hope, peace, and joy in the Universe. That circle finds its form in what I call the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. It is on this day I remember this circle of all that is good taking on human form in the depths of human suffering and brokenness. 

It is still here. He/She is still here. The Divine came irreversibly into the world over 2000 years ago and remains present in all those who allow It to live through them. It lives through you and I if we allow it it to. That circle of good many of us find ourselves drawn into is a step in the right direction.