22 March 2008
Why I am here and what to expect.
I feel obliged to let everyone know how this pitiful blog came to be. On a summer night in 1998 I took a monument tour in Washington, D.C. I walked reverently into the Jefferson Memorial as if Jefferson himself lived there. I read the inscription in the statue chamber and I spoke them queitly, making the vow my own. "I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man." While my hostility has been strong, it has been been unfocused for almost ten years. Everyone that tried telling me what or how to think I viewed as a tyrant. That made college a difficult place for me, but I won't digress into that.
Tyranny in Jefferson's time was easier to identify than it is today. To see his tyranny, one must simply read the Declaration of Independence. To understand today's tyrant, one must read Volume II, Part IV, Chapter 6 of Democracy in America by Tocqueville. In a nation of equality, tyranny does not break one's will, but rather softens, bends, and guides it. The daily exercise of free will becomes less useful and government covers the whole of social life with a network of petty, complicated rules that hinders, restrains, enervates, stifles, and stultifies so much that we become a flock of timid and hardworking animals relying on our government as the shepherd.
This is the state of existence that makes me hostile. Every time I turn on C-SPAN or the news I feel like shouting, "Help! Help! I'm being repressed." Our will isn't being broken, it's being worn down. I'll let it be known right now that I can't fix it. That isn't my task. I'm not here to repair our broken government or replace it with something better. I'm not here to change the world or to save it. And I'm certainly not here to tell you what or how to think. I'm just here to be hostile.
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5 comments:
I have become increasingly aware that in spite of what I've always been taught and believed, man is but a mere pawn in the game that God has pre-ordained. As in 1984, sometimes the only form of protest that allows one their own sanity is their innate right to be inwardly hostile towards what IS. Because what IS can't be changed. Strangely, inner peace is found in accepting that you are who you are by design, your position in life you have absolutely no hold over, and everything that has or will ever happened to you has already been recorded in the Book of Life (not to be confused with the Lamb's Book of Life). Being able to release the false hope that you can change anything brings a strange level of happiness in that release. Giving up is necessary to maintain sanity. But that doesn't mean we have to be happy about it, damn it..or go quietly into that good night...we have a right to be hostile. Beautiful.
By the way...off the point...on my Washington Tour I had an eerie moment in the Jefferson Memorial where I was the only one there at time stood still. I read the ensignia around the dome and ...well, can't explain it. It was twilight zone stuff...the whole America thing came together for me. Hypnotizing place.
Travis,
Perhaps the "hostility" is a longing for a better system, woven into your fabric by your Creator. A kingdom that will crush the existing order to dust... The kingdom of King Jesus. It is coming.
"Jesus is being lost in a religion bearing his name. People are being lost because they cannot reconcile Jesus' association with Christianity. Christianity has become docile, domesticated, civilized. We have forgotten that there is a kingdom of darkness stealing the hopes and dreams and souls of a humanity without God. It is time to hear the barbarian call, to form a barbarian tribe, and to unleash the barbarian revolt. Let the invasion begin..."
Erwin McManus "The Barbarian Way"
"Then the seventh angel sounded: And there were loud voices in heaven, saying, "The kingdoms of this world have become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ, and He shall reign forever and ever!"
Don't be a stranger.
The problems we face as a nation, as a religion, and as individuals is just an overwhelming host of petty little things. A simple perfect example that you both must know something about is a brand of political correctness at the pulpit. If you say something out of line, usually people don't jump up out of their pew and punch you in the mouth for saying it. You just don't get many amens and a bunch of remarks afterward. That is the gentle type of slavery we endure.
And let us all be clear, perhaps some things can and will change. I'm just being realistic. All I can do is see things for what they are and shout it out to the world. Does this make me powerless? Insignificant? I believe so. However, a little hostility becomes a revolution given enough fuel. Just ask a bunch of insignificant hacks that threw a little tea party in Boston Harbor.
About this whole helplessness thing. I bought Democracy in America for .99 on Amazon and read it because you said I couldn't come back without reading it or couldn't be an American, or something: This was in the intro to the book, and think it applies to the discussion:
The various occurrences of national existence have everywhere turned to the advantage of democracy: all men have aided it by their exertions, both those who have intentionally labored in its cause, and those who have served it unwittingly; those who have fought for it, and those who have declared themselves its opponents, have all been driven along in the same track, have all labored to one end; some ignorantly and some unwillingly, all have been blind instruments in the hands of God.
Isn't that a crapper. Consider that Democrats, Republicans, Socialists, Communists, are all on the same track and going the same direction, - we're just in different rail cars. The undeniable fact is that we all do have the same destination and we'll all even get there at the same time. I'm not talking about eternity. I'm talking about the cess-pool of civilization that Jesus is going to come back to.
By the way, that Barbarian quote is the feaking most cool thing I've ever read. This week.
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