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/