With very a very little thought, it is quite easy to be
amazed at the myriad ways that man tries to eat his cake and freeze-frame it at
the same time. It is a custom, of
course, at weddings, including that of my son Mark and new daughter Alison, to
save a smaller cake for one year, to be eaten by the couple at the first year
anniversary. This is a relatively new
custom since the advent of artificial refrigeration and a consistent power grid
required to cover the entire nation,
every moment of the day.
So there is a better than fair chance that said cake will be
preserved for said year and be consumed, if the dear ones remember it, on said
date or thereabouts. But it won’t be, of
course, the same cake they ate yesterday.
But man is convinced, worldwide, that he is the grand
exception to such universal rules as time/space, entropy, and the law of
non-contradiction; these mandate naturally
constant revision of the universe—and all of our “constants”-- by power
far greater than our own. I continue to
meet those whose god is technology, who are nonetheless extremely cynical about
humanity itself. In other words, they
are highly suspicious of their own species, yet greatly in love with it
byproducts/ waste products which most must admit progressively poison our
atmosphere, not just physically, but socially, and metaphysically, just to
mention these few.
C.S Lewis rightly called these true believers, “materialist
magicians,” which of course is an oxymoron, but rightly describes our
post/modern predicament as forecast by Lewis, and many others. (Arthur Koestler comes to mind) The magic part is of course the technology;
in which we dream of preserving, yea, improving a species on the downward
trend, who will probably destroy himself long before he can incorporate
affordable eugenics, and whose genome includes such irreducible complexity that
even the most brilliant genetic engineers will without doubt do far more harm than good, and
stress will continue to be on
superficial and cosmetic changes as
breeders are wont to do and only Hollywood/Dollie-wood can afford.
People, especially Americans who are desperately dependent
on an unsustainable and fragile E=power
and economic grid, which lies atop of a social grid that is far less stable
than what it supports, must have their defense mechanisms beefed up—especially denial—to
think that things will simply get better and better; they actually believe, in
spite of whole continents of examples to the contrary, that technology—and may
I add, nothing but technology-- will save the human race. No, not only save it, but make it palpably and
visibly immortal; that we are imbued with so much cleverness and
adaptability that we can literally and physically make ourselves into gods,
little lights that will never go out—that somehow in spite of extinctions going
on all around us, every day, that we are the surfeit-of luck exception;
as Grace Slick sarcastically called us, “The Crown of Creation.”
But without the laurel crown! Here the contradictions in the “usual
shipping lanes” of human thinking, becoming truly untenable, based on our 19th
Century creation myths, which are remarkably persistent. The illusion of progress is remarkably persistent;
probably proceeding in lockstep with our consumption of caffeine and antidepressants,
which we must pour on top of the other hallucinogens, just to get through the
day, living on illusion and the current fad for existentialism, i.e. believe in
yourself, follow your dream, and so on, standard Hollywood fare; all completely
irrational, ex nihilo, and “hanging on
nothing!!!’
Thus the other half of the equation, that we can be as
nihilistic and cynical as we like; and still improve on ourselves. Because technology is presumed to be a separate entity from its source! This of course is a triple illusion—consigning
body soul and spirit to the ash heap, yet taking this “great leap of faith
forward,” leaving reason and reality somehow behind us.
The idea behind all
this is that our abstractions somehow have an identity and existence of
their own; not only apart from our current generations, but even apart from
other abstractions, such as “the future.”
We live in denial of death all the time.(which includes our individual
death but also the death of the species—species do go extinct, you know—and never
has there been a species like ours that has become incredibly effective at self
destruction and anti-procreation and still expects to survive.) We don’t even really consider our future per
se, but only our self-contradictory dreams, which like all dreams are a
concoction of what has gone on the day before, and we assume that today will be
like yesterday; maybe temporarily worse, but “saved by the bell,” eventually;
and somehow exonerated of our inherent short-sightedness and hubris.
I read today the story of the Canaanite army of Sisera,
which was allowed to persecute again-apostate Israel, with “900 IRON CHARIOTS. “ This army was routed by 2 women, Deborah and
Jael, both of whom had more sense,
because of more intimacy with God, than any man in the world at that time. So, did they glorify themselves? Were they “proto-feminists?” Were they triumphant because technology saved
them? What is a hammer and a tent peg
and a drink of milk, against 900 chariots, eh?
For those of my
readers who think than man will triumph, by himself, through all adversity,
because he has “conquered nature” while yet being blind and deaf and totally unable to keep himself in
check and continues not to learn a thing from history, and merely have an abstract
and unprecedented and unwarranted faith
in materialism and a humanity resting uneasily—and rightly so—on what’s
left of a decaying genome—you have my sympathy.
But I am not ever again getting on your boat or train or whatever you want to call it...
Like Tolkien, I do not have the requisite faith in humanity
qua humanity, to depend on materialist magicians who rape the Shire and expect
to be extraordinarily pardoned by no god at all. Science qua science;much less postmodern psuedoscienctism; is not on man's side. Reason per se is not either. Love is; the Creator who created solely out
of selfless Love is; but the vast majority live lives of desperate
variations; on a single theme of auto-authority in the face of a howling
universe (so they say) which is dedicated to the quick extinction of the entire
human “genome project,” starting with gravity itself (dedicated to pulling us
six feet under, then further down than we can think or imagine):
No this is not enough; we take the troulble to cast off
Freud with his inconvenient truths about our miserable defense mechanisms which yet are the
fodder off which we live; and Marx with his grim truth about our materialism;
yet in the face of all this, our land and the entire world now worshops at the
feet of Mr. Darwin, the misogynist racist predecessor of meaningless atrocities
with the single mantra, necessarily, of “Well, why not?” and “Because I can.” And all of this for one reason and one reason
only:
“We will not have this Man to rule over us.”
(from Genesis to Revelation, still the same;
which oddly enough fits with the configuration
of the known universe—as I have said elsewhere; and will continue to express
even after I have lost my last reader.)
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