The Divine Artist Is Always Creating

One is not defined by perfection. Nothing is in its ideal form. To reduce something to the ideal is to freeze it. However, when you arrest something in it's progress in this way, you kill it. The constant of reality is movement. 

In the beginning the world was formless and void. The creation story is about the Creator bringing form, and thus purpose to this void. To observe the follow on stories with any amount of honesty is to see this process of bringing order from chaos and meaning out of the void is continued in various and complex permutations. Thus no single instant can be reduced to anything other than the part it plays in the whole. 

This is not to say there is no right or wrong. There are in fact things that bring life and things that do not bring life, and to assume otherwise is to be as equally imperceptive as reading the scripture without recognizing the constancy of both change and the creative process of the Father. 

However, we come at this life giving impulse from a meta perspective, and in a transformational way especially when we forgive in the instant what transgressed us, as it too can be redeemed. This forgiveness must also be applied to the self. We can indeed by grace transcend that which once bound us. 

We choose to participate accepting that things are more than the sum of their parts. In faith I accept and choose to participate with the Creator because I believe the Divine Artist is still creating. 

Superstition

It is common in conservative circles to long for a return to the "golden days".  It is also common among progressives to put great faith in a future where the arch of history trends towards justice (that is if evil conservatives don't destroy everything before we get there).  Now, even in Socrates' time there were those who envisioned a return to the good old days, just as there were iconoclasts preaching faith in humanity and a coming age of peace on earth if only they were in charge.

The same strains keep coming up throughout history. However, perhaps the most insidious one, and especially so because it crosses ideologies, is the concept, conscious or otherwise, that we are somehow different, and superior now than before. Of course with the passage of time the civilization has accumulated great knowledge and achievements. We have an infinity of information at arm's reach through whatever you are reading this on. We live longer, go more places, have more experiences than at any other time in human history. However, the hubris of modernity has blinded us to the reality that as the island of our knowledge expands, so too does the coastline of the unknown.

We are drunk on information, and yet malnourished of understanding, and even surrounded with greater security and opportunity than ever before, we are fearful.  And so we prove we are not in fact much more advanced than nomadic ancestors by doing what humans have always done, which is to fall for superstition. 

We laugh at the idea of thinking we have to sacrifice woodland creatures to appease some maleficent deity, and we cringe at the thought of sacrificing a child to the same, and yet with superficial cosmetic changes, many still do both. 

Superstition is the dark side of pattern matching, the process of identifying cause and effect relationships. The problem arises when we deceive ourselves into such a relationship were there never was one, and yet so fearful of the unknown, do everything we can to manipulate a system that never existed in the first place. It used to look like the above example of the sacrificial woodland creature, or virgin, first born, etc. Now it looks like aborting a child because a test shows a possibility for genetic defects. The rationalization is that your are saving a unborn fetes from a life of suffering. When considering the fact, that, a) everyone suffers, and b) a "defect" has been the catalyst for some of the most transformational characters in history, and c) that the child doesn't have a context for viewing their life as suffering to begin with, it becomes obvious the original motive is nothing but a superstitious rationalization for the real motive, which that the parent doesn't want to suffer the unknown of caring for a disabled child.

This is a dramatic example, but this is found in banal forms everywhere. The self esteem craze I grew up with posited that high self esteem lead to high achievement. Many of us grew up being told we could do anything, be anything, deserved everything. Predictably, when we found out this wasn't true, many simple blamed everyone but themselves for being in a predicament as old as the species. You often have to earn your way to something you desire. In essence, the self esteem obsession was a superstitious belief that put the effect ahead of the cause, and trained a lot of people to be entitled asshats, a condition that is going to take some time and possibly a major drop in the standard of living, to give voice and action to the valorous ideals we, so many of us, hold deep in our hearts and minds. 

Take political correctness for example. We like to think we have moved beyond the Inquisition because we aren't heretics at the stake, and this is certainly an improvement. However, when something you said a decade plus before it was considered offensive can still destroy your reputation, we have an unbalanced morality.  Look close enough and we have all failed to a degree in the ways we most punish others. When group identity, which never takes into account actual complexity, like that the group itself is a construct, is more important than the choices and character of the individual, we are simply returning to the spiritual trailer park of codependency and group solidarity being more important than right or wrong.  

The only way out of this cave of shadows into the daylight of reality is honesty. Brutal self examination. Actually telling it like it is. Honesty is a blunt force weapon. And it is pain that will enlighten us. 

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 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. 

There Is No "Never Again".

Everyone has fighting in their blood. This isn't some mystical statement. It is a historical and biological fact. If we didn't, our ancestors would have died out and we would not now be here. We all descended in a way from warriors. The vast majority of human history and prehistory is chaotic, violent, and dangerous. It is true that we are a social species capable of great cooperation, as well as great sacrifice. However, we are, and have always been predatory. It is important to remember this observations as it can inform much of our perception of current times, in which it is increasingly in vogue to hold any allusion to violence as both taboo and glamorized like Victorian notions of sex. 

The idea that we can make love not war misses several critical steps between where we are now and this dreamed of utopia, such as the wills of everyone else who shares the same planet. Thucydides said that all war is ultimately the result of fear, honor, and interest. He may have added that it is in fact the perception of these that underpins the majority of human conflict. Most violence comes down to misunderstanding, lack of judgment, and miscalculation, and, contrary to those who believe in an impending singularity to save us from ourselves, we are more connected than ever, and yet understand each other less than ever. It is for this reason, as well as the empirical evidence of continued and increasing conflict throughout the world which leads me to conclude that whether it be due to misunderstanding or not, we are not becoming more peaceful. 

However, at the same time that most violence is underpinned by misunderstanding, as Sun Tzu said, victory goes to he who has deeper understanding of himself, the environment, and the enemy. The ancients claimed that wisdom held the world together, and there is a reason Athena was the goddess of both war and wisdom. Misunderstanding aside, what we must realize, and what those dreaming on of a utopia do not, is that once a fight has started, it must soon be ended, and on terms favorable to the greater good. Surrender does not satisfy this requirement. 

And so it falls to those of us willing to be the current generation's incarnation of the warriors who made our existence today possible to step forward and endure the sacrifice, pain, suffering, and death to end the fight. It is unfortunate that just as we understand each other less than ever, we fail to understand those who fight even less so, and that we repress this facet of existence even more than Victorian sexuality. At the same time and contrary to popular belief, there is no never again. So long as people dream of an impossible utopia, conflict remains all the more possible. 

South Park And Complex Problems

To every complex problem, there is a complex solution. This is to say that anyone saying that we need a common sense answer to nearly anything we face doesn't actually know what they are talking about. And yet, with our fruit fly attention span, we are ever ready to throw our support behind someone offering to let us forget our responsibility for self discipline, avoid harsh realities, and fall into a delusion of a golden path to utopia.

Take poverty for example. Any number of solutions to poverty can be proposed, from taxing the 1% who ostensibly horded all the wealth, thus creating poverty, to increasing social services to those in poverty with no clear path to actually getting them out of said poverty, but only keeping them on life support. Compassionate provisions for the the lowest members of society ensures we do not lose our soul. Likewise, expecting those with the most to also give the most is only in keeping with our notions of civic virtue. However, the simplistic theorizing of the application of these notions is akin to the South Park underpants gnome get rich quick scheme.



Needless to say, some important detail is missing.

We don't live in a simple world. We cannot will or ignore this important fact away. There is no perfect system and the reason we elect, employ, and allow people to run our political, economic, and social systems is because all these things require constant management and supervision. At the same time, we still cannot shake the messianic delusion of a clear path to utopia.

Complicate this with the understanding that for nearly all complex problems, there is no perfect complex solution, but only gradient of worse and less worse. Tax the 1% into oblivion and see in the same instant all major economic activity move somewhere else, but tax reasonably, and you will find there are loopholes the law didn't even know about. Likewise, as long as welfare is more profitable than minimum wage, you can figure out what the most economic solution is. Raise minimum wage and you will see that there are a lot more minimum wage workers allowed to work a lot less. But create more higher than minimum wage jobs, and see just how far reaching from environmental policy, to education, to urban zoning, to law enforcement, such a feat must be to be supportable.

There are many details to complex solutions. However, the first and most important is action down to the lowest level. This is the 1st civic virtue and one we blatantly ignore when we expect someone else to fix our problems. Rather than waiting for some policy to be voted on and executed to deal with the homeless man on the side walk, go by lunch for him yourself, and you will profit far more than these guys.

Paradoxical Illusion

Viktor Frankl once said suffering ceases to be suffering when it has a meaning. Meanwhile, we worry about the slightest bit of discomfort in our children for fear it could damage their self esteem. We take offence at the slightest notice of something tangentially relating to identity, and we construct a notional agenda of oppression being propagated by the dominant culture against the masses to justify this offence.

At the same time, the slightest bit of suffering, just like CS gas, manages to fill the entire void of our existence even though we have established the meaning of our existence to be the avoidance of suffering. We rage against the dominant culture, the 1%, the patriarchy, the ignorant, the right wing, the left wing, etc, because of the assumed agenda of oppression that is supposedly being consciously propagated like the reptilian conspiracy, the Illuminati, whatever flavor of tin foil hat wearing nonsense you are most amused by.

I propose that rather than a shadowy agenda, as always we need look no farther than ourselves for both the cause of and the solution to our sufferings.

We are attempting to transcend ourselves and in so doing transcend our own mortality by creating a Utopian equitable society. We are stifling all meaningful discourse and respect for opposing view points along the way to this pipe dream. The paradox of pursuing a Utopia is that you must run a police state to get there. And yet this delusion is somehow favorable enough for much of our public sentiment to conform to it.

The search for meaning to transcend our own mortality is the central drive of all humanity. We are apes that are aware of the universe and this paradox of the infinite and the certain and ever approaching mortality of us all is simply too much to tolerate without delusions. This drive is even more central than basic biological needs. Those address immediate survival, whereas the search for meaning is a question of our ultimate immortality.