How Abusive Relationships, Growing Up, Easter, And Red Dragons Are All Connected.

We in the modern world tend to have a hard time establishing boundaries. This manifests itself in several gradients of deviant behavior, ranging from not being able to take the keys away from your friend who is about to get a DUI, to staying in an abusive relationship way past the time when the significant other stopped caring whether it was your fault, or not, and just started taking advantage to no end.

Learning to make the distinction of where you end and another person begins is the foundation of all life giving human relationships. It's what happens when we can go our own ways from our parents. It's what happens when we don't give in to peer pressure and instead pursue what we want in life. It's what happens when we experience the best in committed relationships, both romantic and otherwise when we love people for who they are rather than what they do for us, and it's what happens when we are able to watch our descendants grow into their own independent selves.

The reason this is such a hard thing to determine and that it is such a source of friction in our lives is because it brings into question issues of core identity and insecurity that the modern social order does not at all help. Because we have been raised with a wholly western idea of moral relativism, we do not know what is up or down, what is right or left, or what is good or bad. We do not question that which we deeply want to, and only challenge those who do not conform to this ideal. Tolerance is only good to the degree that it makes people safe. Beyond this, it has resulted in a deep fear of questioning and conflicting over anything more substantial than those who are seen to be intolerant. Thus, in the absence of challenge, which, in this case, is the same thing as boundaries, we are left defenseless against the more malignants elements of, not only society, but our own personalities. 

One of these malignant elements is the need to belong. Like all perversions, it is nothing more than something that was, it its proper state, good. Finding your place in the world, and finding your place with other humans is good. However, doing so at the expense of your own humanity, and making sacrifices of your own identity to conform is not, and as has been mentioned before is the source of a vast spectrum of deviant behaviors. 

However, as with many things, there are second and third order effects to this deviant behavior. Deep within ourselves, we try to compensate for the violation of our spiritual immune systems because of our lack of boundaries by setting them up in other places. In essence, we triangulate our brokenness away because we cannot confront the root cause. 

The most profound and yet least obvious place we place boundaries is with any notion of something greater than ourselves, anything.......Divine. Believe or don't believe. The existence of God is something that cannot be proven, no matter how much the right wing types try, and cannot be disprove, no matter how ignorant the the Richard Dawkens followers' arguments get. It is not something that is debated intellect to intellect. It is something that bypasses the red dragons guarding our minds and snatches the perches right out from under their claws as it goes strait to the heart. Of course their is a God, and of course we all know this at some level of our psyches. And yet it is with the Divine that we establish the strongest boundaries, whether we believe or do not believe. We assume there is no God, or that we have killed God, or that we have to be good enough to be accepted by God, or that some are destined to Paradise and others to eternal damnation, whatever that is. 

If indeed there is a God, would the Divine not be anything other than the height of perfection beyond all that we heretofore see and the ultimate embodiment of all our deepest suspicions of what true love and beauty and good in fact are? Would God not in fact be the height of our greatest human ideals of good and compassion and acceptance and love and the ultimate expression of what we only grasp at when we admire great acts of selflessness? Would God not also be the ultimate expression of even the most natural love of a mother for her child or a father slaving to support his family? Could the truth in fact be better than we have ever imagined, even though our deepest psyches have supposed it for so long and driven us in search of it for as long as we have been who we are? At the same time, does not the suspicion of this at the same time cause apprehension, almost as if you don't want to look because you don't want to be disappointed? 

Today, many throughout the world remembered the destruction of the boundary between the Divine and the rest of reality, not that any such barrier ever existed, but the point had to be made clear. This is the essence of the Resurrection. The deepest longing of us all are there for a reason. They are there to be satisfied. Come into the great house where street dwellers, prostitutes, politicians, even pop stars, end even you and me become equals. This is the essence of salvation. 

Come home. The door is always open. 

Revolution Doesn't Solve Anything

A common trend in political discussion, as well as anything else pertaining to a large mass of individuals is to forget the role of the individual almost entirely. It is thus consistently common when advocating for some form of change away from the dismal norm to either talk about that change in terms of ultimately hollow platitudes and meta concepts, or to start going off about "revolution". This is by no means a new phenomenon. It's where we got the dual rise of Communism and Fascism from. On the other hand, the ultimately boring and depressing talk about getting to some morally superior plain, which sounds surprisingly similar to the talk of women still not being equal to men in the work place, or on the other side of the isle, how we have gotten away from family values and thus are about to crumble as a society, has been recorded since when the ancients still reverenced Athena.

Great ideas, with no hope of being realized 

Actions realized that burned out like wildfire and burned millions in the process

As with everything else, these trends arise for the same reason the course of water is always towards the least resistance. It's easy to push for an untenable extreme, which forces extreme sacrifice and thus irreversible commitments, or to advocate unclearly defined concepts that are just big enough for no one to actually have to look at their reflection and see something about them to be changed. The mark of great skill and wisdom though is build something that lasts. 

This does not happen at a meta level of ideas, or through some great awakening. The first is not specific and not actionable. The second, like wildfire, dies out eventually, as has been the case with all great social movements, from political uprisings to church revivals. This is because both courses appeal to the crowd, whether it be increasingly pervasive media projections of "normal", or race riots and occupy encampments. 

What is ignored is the individual. It is ultimately easier to avoid hard choices by not making them because  your supposed "values" would be violated by a required compromise, or because the choice has already been made for you in the heat of a mob in the process of being dispersed by police in riot gear. This makes the choices of each of us no less important. 

The choice is actually not so complicated. In making it, it is critical to always realize that no one is obligated to care about anything and should not be expected to. If you wonder if the world gives a f**&, it doesn't. However it for you to decide if you will. Thus dispense with self pity, as it only brings more suffering. Stop feeling sorry for yourself for being misunderstood because it only leads to pain, and stop considering that things are as they are because people are stupid. The mirror could just as easily be turned on you by someone else. Rather, consider those around you, both near and far and take their welfare into account. Don't make advocacy about some grand cause that is just big enough for you to hid behind it in the face of pain and suffering that is right in front of you every day. Don't decide to ignore because it is to stressful to care or because the problem is too big to ever solve. It is progressively solved every time someone does show compassion and does risk caring for those who cannot care for themselves. Consider the homeless alcoholic begging for spare change and realize that, though such people will always be here, the opportunity is yours to relieve suffering now. Such opportunities should never be wasted. 

It is not through a revolution, or reaching a higher plain of conciseness that we find peace and justice. It is also not through devotion to high ideals and strict observance of narrow beliefs, a crime for which atheists can be just as guilty as the most hardened Westboro Baptist goer. 

It is through the compassion we show to those around us right now.

And especially towards those for whom no one has the time or care to show compassion. 

Someone who decided to care and will never be forgotten for it