G-d and Human Freedom

 

 

Art from my webcomic series under construction

Sometimes I think of human freedom in purely "necessary evil" terms. In other words, G-d does not want to be a slave master, does not want to compel us to be good, but wants us to come to Him of our own free will. In order for that to be the case, human evil has to exist in the world. The human evil that so often vexes my heart and makes me ashamed to be a member of this species.

However, it seems to me now that I have underestimated the intentions of G-d. Duh, Captain Obvious is Obvious. ;) Of course I underestimate the intentions of the Almighty. How could I not?

Yes we must be free in order to choose G-d and good and truth and beauty and righteousness freely, not through compulsion. And thus evil must be in the world for us to freely choose good. But we also must be free in order to be... us. That unique person, as unique as every fingerprint or snowflake. Of all the billions of people on Earth, there is only one of each of us. Some things are neither commanded nor forbidden but are simply us being us. Our expression of our innate uniqueness.

Of all these billions, how many will never bring out the unique personality that is within them? The expression that only they of 8 billion people can make? If G-d loves us, and I believe He does, does he not also love the unique self that only you in all of time and space can ever be?

Of course, self-expression is no excuse for breaking commandments or causing harm. Grafitti artists are much in vogue in the past decades, and I too sometimes like the art itself. I cannot like the act, however: harming the property of others just to express yourself is functionally the same as stealing property. We can express ourselves without causing harm, and we must do so. I have been watching clips from a movie about an artist, and what strikes and riles me is his continual property crimes. Keeping the Commandments and doing no harm is way more important than any personal expression.

However, I have no doubt that it is not simply for the sake of free choice that we are free. We are free so that we can be who we are at all. Each one, the only one in existence.

Chaos and Bad Order

 

The "Apple of Eden" from the movie "Assassin's Creed."
In the story, the Apple contains the genetic code to eliminate free will.

 
CHAOS:
There is an eternal human struggle between chaos and BAD order. Between destructive freedom and destructive despotism. In a condition of chaos, such as predominates currently, the majority of humans will succumb to their base desires, especially since no one is available or trusted to train them not to do so.

Indeed, the very idea that some spiritual leaders SHOULD train people to resist their instincts, base desires and self-will is repudiated. According to "modern" wisdom, people are actualized and fulfilled by giving into their desires, even though demonstrably they are not. One only needs to look at the levels of fentanyl addiction today to see that.

People are ACTUALLY actualized and fulfilled by sacrificing their base desires and self-will for a higher cause. A holy purpose.

However the very idea of a higher purpose is repudiated and indeed, reviled by modernism. It is anathema to the modernist zeitgeist. The Assassin's Creed franchise will be mentioned in this post, but it is worth inserting at this point what that creed is:

 "Where other men blindly follow the truth, Remember:
NOTHING IS TRUE.

Where other men are limited by morality or law, Remember:
EVERYTHING IS PERMITTED."

 
Blindly follow the TRUTH? Everything is PERMITTED? Being opposed to truth and morality does not sound like a good creed to me. Truth is truth. Morality is central. Even a pagan, the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, said that the practice of virtue is the essential human purpose. But these are the folks we are supposed to root for, more or less, in that franchise.

The original quote "nothing is true: everything is permitted" is originally from William Burroughs, the homosexual drug-using wife-murdering bad boy of the Beats in the 1950's, as I will address later.

So we have looked at chaos, and you do not have to look far to see it. It is everywhere, and incredibly destructive. Where everyone is FREE to follow their most base self, the majority will. They are like lambs without a shepherd, and they are also against all shepherds.

BAD ORDER:
What is bad ORDER? Order is necessary to civilized life, and we see what happens when it breaks down. Murders and rapes, sewage runs in the streets, drug addiction, the water is not fit to drink and the food is not fit to eat, electricity only runs a few hours a day. Most third world countries and many that are headed that way are like this. We are not that far off.

The problem with a human order is that those who most want power are those who should be prevented at all costs from obtaining it if possible. Power in general is a nearly irresistible temptation to indulge one's basest self (think: Hunter Biden.) Imagine what you would do if you had all power and could never be brought to account for anything you do? If that prospect appeals to you, you should never be anywhere near the levers of power; but even people who mean well can be corrupted by it because humans are easy to corrupt and it is very difficult to train them to resist corruption. It would require virtually a moral superhuman to resist abusing power.

In the AC franchise, the Templars genuinely want to end war, crime and violence and bring about a "progressive" New World Order. They are not Idi Amins. Most seem to truly mean well. However, the only way they ever seem to find to achieve those goals is to seek out the Apples of Eden which have the power to destroy human free will... for everyone but themselves, of course. They would be set up as the new rulers of the world.

However for examples of bad order, we don't have to look as far as computer game franchises. Hitler famously made the trains run on time. That's order. Order is good. He was also a homocidal megalomaniac whose actions lead to the destruction of Germany and murdered ten million people he had a personal grudge against, that's bad order. In bad order, leaders are free to oppress the people and indulge their most insane desires, because such an order is lead by a corruptible human who was probably horrendously evil to begin with or they would not have been able to grab power for themselves and keep it. Saddam Hussein and his sons are the perfect exemplars of such bad order. His sons did whatever they wanted, raped any women they wanted and murdered absolutely at will, and nobody could call them to account for it.


THE CYCLE:
And so human societies cycle between bad order and chaos, with each new wave of chaos presenting an invitation to bad order and every bad order presenting an invitation to chaos. While I have no doubt that we are currently under the sway of chaos in American society and a bad order in Washington, does anyone doubt that if things really break down there will be despots waiting in the wings that will make the Bidens look nearly domesticated? I do not. While Trump has up to this point acted in positive and necessary ways in his first administration, with his talk of revenge and executing drug dealers he is clearly poised to go despotic under the right circumstances, and under those circumstances a Trump despotism might be seen as a positive development. Sometimes an ascendant bad order that has not yet attempted to give in to its worst impulses can improve significantly on chaos if those are the only options. After all, we all do want order to be kept on the streets, the water to be fit to drink and food fit to eat, we all want to be safe in our own homes and not get murdered or raped. We all want the trains to run, the planes not to crash, and the mail to be delivered.

There are brief periods of time when a golden balance seems to be achieved between chaos and bad order, mostly when an order that isn't all that bad starts gradually shifting towards chaos. However, such times are rarely as benign as they appear, and all carry the seeds of their own destruction. The 1950's are often viewed as such a time in America, buoyed by increasing prosperity. However, tremendous degenerates were also around waiting for their moment, extending before and after the 1950's. Writers like F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Jack Kerouac were each lauded as the voice of their generation, and all were advocates for either leftism, drunkenness, hedonism, general degeneracy or all of the above. Writers in praise of the modernist zeitgeist - no wonder they were decorated with literary laurels.

Kerouac pals William Burroughs and Alan Ginsberg were homosexuals and pedophiles; Burroughs admittedly a pedophile. He especially liked Arab boys. Burroughs actually went to South America to play with a drug that most decent Americans had never heard of or imagined, Ayahuasca. I believe this was after he murdered his own wife but before he wrote tomes about heroin addiction and homosexuality. So the Fifties had some real monsters: it's just that most people (and they should be grateful) didn't know about them. Kerouac himself drank himself to death, which is always a nice final coda to your literary resume. Hemingway blew his own head off with a shotgun, which is not nearly as literary as drinking yourself to death but might well be considered to be the logical conclusion of his life.

RIGHT ORDER:
If human history continually cycles between chaos and bad order, what is right order? G-d lays it out pretty clearly in the book of Exodus: you should not be dominated by a human king (Pharaoh,) nor should you be dominated by your basest self (the big party at the base of the golden calf.) G-D ALONE should be your king, and His laws the Torah and especially the Ten Commandments. You keep that, you need no other kings.

Of course just because G-d plans something nicer, doesn't mean that human beings can't decide against it. People might say, "you say that G-d had this better plan and that humans opted out of it: is G-d omnipotent or not? How could G-d fail?" Well, G-d didn't fail: humans did and failure has always been within the human purview. We are free to fail: indeed I believe that G-d continually chooses in favor of preserving human freedom, even at the price of frequent and nigh-inevitable human failure. After the righteous order under Moses and Joshua and the chaos of the period of the Judges, the Israelites wanted a human king.

So all the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel at Ramah. They said to him, “You are old, and your sons do not follow your ways; now appoint a king to lead us, such as all the other nations have.”

But when they said, “Give us a king to lead us,” this displeased Samuel; so he prayed to the Lord. And the Lord told him:

“Listen to all that the people are saying to you; it is not you they have rejected, but they have rejected Me as their king.

As they have done from the day I brought them up out of Egypt until this day, forsaking me and serving other gods, so they are doing to you. Now listen to them; but warn them solemnly and let them know what the king who will reign over them will claim as his rights.”

~1 Samuel 8:4-9

And so RIGHT order disappeared from the Earth. And I would be lying to you if I told you I thought there was much of any chance of it coming back. The RIGHT order is the Kingdom of G-d. Such an order may no longer be possible on this Earth, but it is not that difficult to imagine what it might look like should the miraculous happen and a nucleus of right order be created in this world. Children would be taught to keep G-d's law and conquer their baser selves for the sake of their better selves. Young people would be taught to embrace self-discipline and submit to traditional gender roles as G-d decreed. Those who govern would be the best of these altruistic people and care for the welfare of all while keeping G-d's law and restricting themselves to enforcing that law only while acting as moral guides to being better people. It is not hard to imagine: that it would ever happen is the hard and quite likely impossible thing.

I truly believe that G-d acts to preserve the human freedom to fail, even the freedom of humans to sin though of course G-d cannot approve of sin. But we must all decide for ourselves whether to submit to the rule of G-d, to the Kingdom of Heaven, and few in this age will do so.

 

 

 

 

 

 

It Is My Job to Know Things

 

A humble but beautiful weed in my garden

 
It is my job to know things. It is not my job to fix those things.

They cannot BE FIXED until the end of the age, assuming that such eschatology is even correct. G-d gives Humankind leave to run rampage until then, to do whatever is in their darkened hearts to do, which is mostly bad.

If gnashing my teeth, such as I have left, continually for the rest of my life would give compensation to G-d for the evils of having to bear Homo Sapiens in His sight, I would. Instead, what I feel constantly is the message, "do your work." Fertilize your plants. Cut down the weeds on the path to the compost pile. Make sticks for your tomato plants. Realize how things are and that you cannot affect them. No one made you king of Earth or responsible for it. Do your work.

What's always fun is realizing that your "cultural allies" are also operating under deception, just different deceptions than the Wokies. They are also preferring what they want to G-d's truth. I say they are allies and they are, at least they believe in the Ten Commandments, most of them. Most of them also believe in the Trinity, which is pagan idolatry which was clearly contradicted in the Torah. Something I heard loud and clear, but too few others did:

Hear, O Israel: The Lord your G-d, The Lord is One.

Not three-in-one or any of that other horse shit. Clearly, or G-d would have told us otherwise in the Torah, believing that a human being is also G-d is idolatry. No man was ever G-d: G-d ALONE is G-d. Many others believe in heathenishness like the idea that Mary has special status and can intercede with G-d on behalf of mortals.

EVERYONE STANDS OR FALLS INDIVIDUALLY TO G-D ALONE.

If you want to get right with the Lord, stop sinning, obey the commandments, pray to HIM for assistance, and if you do so in sincerity you will get it. No shortcuts and no intercessors needed. G-d Himself hears your prayers if you are sincere. Even if you are a terrible sinner, if you repent of it sincerely He will hear you. You don't need Mary, or St. Francis, or any human at all. Not Jesus either.

If you ever want to know what it is like to feel completely alone, imagine that no one at all whatsoever agrees with you on anything that really matters. I don't just think these things I KNOW these things, and no one else agrees. No man was G-d; I know that because G-d said it. No man is holy, only G-d; I know that because G-d said it. So don't pray in any way shape or form to HUMAN BEINGS, it is idolatry. Do not represent human beings as holy: we humans have a million million metric BUTT-TONS of things we should be apologizing to G-d for instead of putting halos on HUMAN heads. It is IDOLATRY. Do not plan human laws that violate the COMMANDMENTS of G-d.

And on and on. I know these things because I can understand simple English and I read what He said on Mt. Sinai and afterwards and I can think. And thanks be to the Lord, I can know things. 

And every time I lament the fact that I am completely spiritually alone except for the company of G-d, I slap myself in the head. I am allowed to know, I have been given the grace to know. Never lament THAT. Be infinitely grateful for that. That's my job, along with cutting weeds and fertiizing plants and feeding cats. To know.

To DO anything about it beyond keeping the Commandments myself is not my job. That's outside my job description.

I must keep the Commandments or suffer the consequences, which is reasonably easy because I want to keep them. I gotta do stuff to keep myself going and to prepare for the future. I gotta do dishes and feed stray cats because I gotta do the first and mercy and love dictates the second. I gotta garden. I gotta carry out the poop (I use a "composting toilet," which is a fancy way of saying a lined bucket and a compost pile.) I gotta cook and clean.

I gotta know things and deal with knowing them. It's not actually very hard.

 

 

 

 

 

How to Become Small

 

Photo by Manfred Majer

We humans love ourselves, don't we? We all love, and I include myself, the story of heroes overcoming evil and of humanity overcoming great obstacles to achieve something. The Greatest Generation of WWII. The first flight of the Wright Brothers. In the modern age, the dream that socialism will cure our many ills, that a human-invented mass framework for living will usher us into the golden age. Or conversely, the dream that America is the shining city on the hill when it is anything but.

And I, perhaps more than most, love the idea that humans could be noble and good - even though I know it to be a lie. I love Tolkien's Lord of the Rings precisely because it shows what isn't true and cannot be true in this world, a noble humanity. Unfortunately this nobility frequently expresses itself in war, and war is the opposite of noble. That the wars of the 20th Century have not permanently invalidated the idea of the nobility of humanity and sent us all into sackcloth and ashes to repent of our evil, is a testament to the refusal of the human species to learn or repent or even think.

Of course the stories never tell of people being noble and good at home, tending their gardens or washing their dishes or being good to their spouses or children. It must always be grand, and grand usually either means violent or dangerous, and neither of those things are in truth good things. Violence and danger should only be undertaken in the utmost extremity, and is no more glorious than surviving a bad cancer operation.

The fictions we tell ourselves, even under the pretext of expressing nobility, all involve one thing: the exercise of power. And that is the biggest lie of all. Power always corrupts. Some say that pride is the primal sin, but if it is, power is its close companion.

Aragorn wouldn't have been much of a hero if he couldn't lop off orc heads with the best of them. Luke Skywalker wouldn't have amounted to much if he couldn't wield mystic power and a lightsaber. Spider-Man wouldn't be worth reading or watching if he couldn't kick some ass, even non-lethally. Force is always the threat, and force is always the response to that threat. And this leads to a world where force is always meeting force violently forever. And worse, we glorify force meeting force violently forever.

And I am not saying you shouldn't meet force with force. I have guns, and probably I would use them in defense of hearth and home. I admit liking stories and games with violence in them. As long as that illusory context of nobility is preserved, I probably like them more than most. Perhaps we are quite irredeemable in that respect: humans love violence. Violence is dramatic. Violence adds spice to stories.Where would fiction be without violence? And I happen to like fiction.

My point is that this should make us think long and hard about our true condition in the world. We should lament that condition. For centuries humans have sought paradise, and for centuries they have proven themselves incapable of living in it. Where is the literature of peace, as there is the literature of war? What poet or novelist writes elegies to peace as they do to war? They don't.

So, lament the war in the human soul. Lament our thirst for power. Grieve for the fact that we are not noble, we are warlike greedy arseholes and always have been.

UNDERSTAND THAT, every time you are tempted to glorify the human.

UNDERSTAND THAT, every time you are tempted to support a "noble war."

UNDERSTAND THAT, every time you propose or support some grand top-down solution to solving human problems. What, humans, these monsters, will fix everything? They will not. They will destroy everything.

UNDERSTAND THAT, every time you imagine some noble yet actually violent hero.

UNDERSTAND THAT, every time you are tempted to glorify those who wield POWER of whatever form, whether light sabers or money or technology or politics or a gun.

UNDERSTAND IT.

And having understood it, RENOUNCE POWER. Become small. Accept your true condition in this world, which is to either be small or be evil. Do not use what you don't need. Don't go where you don't need to go. Do not glorify yourself, or your country, or your ideology, or human power. Do what the people of the 20th Century didn't do, which is lament and repent of our wars and the many ways in which we have destroyed the Earth. Put on that sackcloth, take on those ashes. Wear black, do not smile lightly. Accept the discipline of grief. Put on an armband for the sins of humanity. Mourn that humans are such.

And then live small. Learn what you absolutely need and seek to get those things in the most reliable way, and forget about other things. Perhaps, as I have done, seek to extract yourself from the human world and human society because they will never learn and they will carry on as they have done forever. In ignorance.

But at least one person here and there will not.