Before being
kicked out, I attended a parochial high school for two years—two years of Hell,
or of preparation for the arcane tortures of the Apocalypse. An “education in
the Classics,” as they say. The mind is a muscle, which one would never be
allowed to use—or else. Self-knowledge was regarded as a form of masturbation.
Just see where that would lead. And, once you got started, then how would you
ever stop? It might one day become impossible to distinguish between one’s
intellect and an orgasm. No exclamations of “Eureka!” were allowed. One’s flash
of sudden intuition might disrupt the Pre-Game Pep Rally.
Such
intellectual “exercise” as there was—and the use of this term strains language
to the breaking point—was like the watching of an aerobics video: The
instructor shouts like a drill sergeant. It is good for you, somehow. Although
sitting on a couch, one feels virtuous by the end. St. Thomas Aquinas had
corrected the few small mistakes of Aristotle. He was smarter than you! In this
age of genetic recombination, he was the thinking Darwinian’s modernist. He had
determined how many angels should be allowed to dance on a pin. No more need be
said. Even now, those angels are too petrified to get off.
No doubts
need mar one’s contemplation of the shadow of the atomic bomb.
Usurping the
right-of-way on Main Street, we were forever staging marches with felt banners
and singing songs with choruses like, “And they’ll know we are Christians by
our love, by our love.”—Ugh. Such sentiments are among the few things that can
inspire me to hatred. Even now, the sight of a flaming dove can cause my
stomach to turn over. They are not cute; they are evil. When a few football
players judged my hair to be too long, such love didn’t stop them from hacking
it off with a Polish cavalry saber. And yet, mystery of mysteries, both in
their own minds and to school administrators, these thugs were more devout than
I. Cosmic love can be difficult, if not in theory then in practice. It is more
of a rare element than the evidence-free chorus of a song. Cosmic love is not
for beginners, but the basic idea of forgiveness is a sound one.
“Forgive us
our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.”
Christ—yes;
Christians—no. How many devotees of the cross have ever shouldered the full
weight of this pronouncement? The first part they take seriously, yes; the
second part they ignore. To want to be forgiven doesn’t mean that one forgives.
I too do my best to set my enemies free, on certain days, if I am in the mood.
“Bless those who curse you,” said He Whose Name I Will Not Speak. “Only
connect,” said E.M. Forster. Both injunctions point us toward the fact of our
radical interdependence. The web on which we pull is inconceivably complex. We
have no way to extract ourselves. The web breathes us, even as we argue that
our breathing is our own. In the Cloud of Unknowing, forgiveness may prove the
only method of “dead reckoning” that will work.
From the seed
of nothing to the shore of nowhere, we do our best to mark an X upon the fog,
to search our pockets for a spark from a dead sun. How strange that our shadows
hate us. How strange that we trade enemies from one life to the next.
Some hard
kernel of insight has survived my scorched-earth war against the “Savior,” who,
as an omniscient god, should have known better than to hang around with
Christians. “Thank god that I am Jung, and not a Jungian!” exclaimed Jung, in a
tone that we can imagine to be incredulous with disgust, or perhaps relief. A
foreknowing Christ should have followed Jung’s example. I would argue, too,
that a Monotheist is the greatest enemy of the One. They have named “G-d,”
though in a somewhat generic form. To make an idol, they have shrunk the
haunted oceans of the Void. They have cut down the Tree of Life. Omphalos is
now horizontal. They have literalized the interdependent meanings of the
Ur-Text.
Continue reading at Scene4:
https://www.scene4.com/0923/briangeorge0923.html
Masks of Origin: Regression in the Service of Omnipotence,
my first book of essays, is available through Untimely Books:
https://untimelybooks.com/book/masks-of-origin/
