Archive for the ‘Cognitive Dissonance’ Category
The Shepherd and the Destroyer
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My friend sent me a message the other day. She discovered a bit of text that she believed to define me, and I must say that after reading it I do so wholeheartedly agree. Her message contained the words of Bertrand Russell and they could very easily have been mine own. He wrote:
Three passions have governed my life:
The longings for love, the search for knowledge,
And unbearable pity for the suffering of humankind.Love brings ecstasy and relieves loneliness.
In the union of love I have seen
In a mystic miniature the prefiguring vision
Of the heavens that saints and poets have imagined.With equal passion I have sought knowledge.
I have wished to understand the hearts of people.
I have wished to know why the stars shine.Love and knowledge led upwards to the heavens,
But always pity brought me back to earth;
Cries of pain reverberated in my heart
Of children in famine, of victims tortured
And of old people left helpless.I long to alleviate the evil, but I cannot,
And I too suffer.This has been my life; I found it worth living.
Within his words you will find the great force that propels me, as well as the burden which drags me down. I am constantly seeking, constantly wading through the nonsense of this world in order to find the Answer which will save us from ourselves. Love and knowledge are the chains that attach me to the expanse of my brethren: known, unknown, past, and future–it does not matter. I want to help, so deeply and so purely that it creates a suffering I’m sure few could understand. But Bertrand Russell did. And his words added to the popular sentience, to the general lexicon of human suffering.
This magnificent dichotomy of me. This blessed curse of love and hate. It has created within me dual desires, which result similarly but are diametrically opposed. The perfect archetypes of my solution to the suffering, for I am both the Shepherd and the Destroyer. I want to deliver you from pain. I want to take away your misery and elevate you to the highest level of existence. I want us to rejoin God together. I want to end the temporal joys of the material, and the hopeless empty hearts of the flesh. I want to end it all. Yes, the Shepherd and the Destroyer. I am both.
The Shepherd in me desires for nothing less than the power of The Christ. To stand before man King of all Creation and soothe him. The Shepherd within me longs to end the source of our discontent, our very humanity, by taking both the righteous and the wicked to be one with whatever God they choose. I imagine a blinding white light emanating from me, the source of Salvation, and encompassing the entire universe. It is so bright that your very concept of time and space becomes blurred, there is nothing but you…and the light. And it becomes quiet, still…for the first time in your life you are not hungry, or tired, or anguished. Complete serenity. This is God. This is peace. An ocean of consciousness spanning endlessly and you are both everywhere and nowhere. Everyone else is amongst you, within you, and there is Peace.
It is sweet, isn’t it? Desiring the power to push humanity into a plane unbound by flesh. But I am so powerless. I am simply a man; a dot on the evolutionary scale, an infinitesimal blip upon the universe. And powerlessness leads to fear and anger and hate. And hate begets a more feasible plan to end human suffering. The ultimate suffering to end all suffering. Yes, if I cannot deliver you from pain then I will inflict one final pain; one cacophony of misery that this world has never experienced. A jarring and terrifying hurt to end all hurt.
For I am also the Destroyer. The dark knight of both Plague and Salvation. If I cannot elevate our existence, I will end it. And by ending it I will save it. There will be no more jealousy or desire, no famine or genocide. There will be a final judgment and the verdict is the great destruction. Yes, I am powerless to save humanity, but the more tangible, the more human solution, is to end it.
The Shepherd and the Destroyer. Leading the flock or annihilating it. Both result in the same thing, but the execution of which are so different. Do the ends justify the means? Does morality become blurred if the desired goal is righteous? Am I righteous…or simply evil?
I wonder if Bertrand Russell felt as I do? If he desired to save you from the bonds of flesh and rejoin with God, and then his powerlessness consumed him and the only verdict was vengeance? Did he feel my pain? Did he understand me as completely as I hope..?
Love, knowledge, suffering. This is my life. This is my curse. I lack power; I lack the Answer. And I may die doing nothing more to help, and this is what I fear the most.
The American Gifts of Fire and Ice
“One pack of Camel Turkish Silver, please…”
It’s become as common as the sunrise, such a trite and uninspiring statement. My daily habit. Lighting fires and inhaling the smoke. I’ve been wondering a lot about why exactly I started smoking–mostly over the cool warmth of irish whiskey on the rocks. That’s it, isn’t it? Fire and ice. Right hand burning; left freezing…double fisting my own demise.
On a deep level I wonder if I’m purposely killing myself. A subconscious desire to end it all, manifesting in the cacophony of packing cigarettes and lighter hinges. Wouldn’t it be fantastic…the mind recognizing its own agony and slowly poisoning its fleshly vessel? Or is it clearly conscious…which would only add to this tragic comedy. Am I trying to kill myself?
At its most basic level, the answer is yes. What other end do these activities ultimately yield? Its beyond conscious. I know exactly what is happening to my body, but I light up regardless, then wash it down with ice-chilled jet fuel. I used to destroy my father’s cigarettes. I hated him for smoking. Raised on the evils of tobacco and drugs in government schools, I viewed his habit as a betrayal.
And again, like so many other things, I am my father’s son.
Do I want to die? Yes. But not tomorrow. And that’s why I can continue to brandish the forces of fire and ice. Right hand burning; left hand freezing. I want to live a long and wonderful life, with friends and family–a wife and children if god wills. But for right now, right here, I make the conscious decision to jeopardize all of that, because its intangible…its a gamble.
And what are we if not gamblers? It’s the American way, burning hot in our blood like a freshly lit cherry. This is the West–the great frontier. Where Indians threaten and wilderness reigns. Yea, I’m a twenty-first century cowboy. I just don’t wear a damn ten-gallon hat.
Or at least that’s what I’m going to keep telling myself…
An Introduction to Madness…
You are not dreaming. It’s familiar…isn’t it? Like the return of an old friend who you lost, but never quite understood why…
You walk upon the cracks of the same old sidewalks and city streets. Avoiding people, but colliding nonetheless. If not shoulders, swarms of pheromones, electrons, and electromagnetic energies converge as each strange face pushes through the mass. And then above the crowd, above the chaos of organized society, you see that familiar face.
It’s different. Quieter. Longer. More tired. But it is that face. But they were dead…you watched them die. No, not in your arms, but within your mind you recreated their demise a million ways–each time hoping that with their last breath they thought about you. You cannot escape that nightmare.
And just like that…the face slips back into the herd, marching forward for business…or was it pleasure? Or was it nothing more than to haunt you once again? You force yourself through people disconcerned, this time it is not the unseen that collides, but assuredly every part of your physical existence. You fight, and fight…and you soon find yourself alone. Alone with a million people. And no one is familiar.
But you saw that face… Did they smile back at you? Did they recognize you? It was them, you know it. The realization that everyone dies begins to retake its claim to your mind, to your heart. No one returns. You look up into the sky–finding God in between the towers of civilization that disrupt your view. And He tells you…no one dies…no one ever dies. They live in the ones that loved them.
And you loved her. And she is not dead. She will never die again. But I will…and when I do…will anyone ever think they saw that face again..? Or will that die with me, too…