From: cliftonr@netcom.com (Pope Clifton)
Subject: Re: One of my lamer moments to date
Organization: t.b, t.p.d, & a.d
X-Newsreader: Tin 1.1 PL5
Date: Sun, 20 Dec 1992 09:01:28 GMT

J H Woodyatt (bard@cutter.ssd.loral.com) wrote:
: 
: [You read his story.  If you skipped it, don't even bother to read
: this.]

First, a warning.  If you can't stand any philosophizing in this group,
just skip this post.  Don't read it and then come piss on my shoes about it.
You know who I'm talking to.

Second, I'm talking some crazy stuff here at some points, but I think 
some of you will understand me.  It doesn't mean I'm kidding, not at all.
I have been brooding about this again since I read Dr. S's post.



Deep in our hearts we all know that something fundamental 
is wrong with us.  Christian theologians got it right in 
calling it the Fall; what they got wrong is the notion 
that sex had anything to do with it.  I prefer to say 
that we are all broken.  We were perfect once, or knew 
that we could be, and somehow we fell away from it.  We 
are broken, and we are not sure how or why; we only know 
that it can not be fixed.

I claim the source of this brokenness is that we can see 
others as different, as not like us.  Once, perhaps you 
can imagine, we could walk all our lives in a dreamtime 
where every person, every animal, every rock and plant 
and stream was alive and met us with its own bright 
personality, which was not different from our own.  
Parity was broken.  We descended into the world we live 
in now, where we are playing 'Murder in the Dark' with 
real knives and never know, if we touch another's face, 
whether they will touch us back or lash out to maim or 
kill.  Even after we begin to see that we are at root the 
same as the others we encounter -- the first touch of 
empathy -- we still have to live and stumble in the dark 
with the other blind murderers like ourselves.

I hear a story like James' and I am filled with a deep 
rage.  I want to hunt down the man who could commit such 
a crime against an innocent stranger, and batter him into 
a bloody wreck.  That impulse, I fear, is first cousin to 
the twisted hatred which made such a man go out and beat 
a total stranger, for the satisfaction of lashing out at 
someone different and hence wrong.

This is not just idle daydreaming for me.  I've "seen the 
elephant", as James has.  A few years ago, I found myself 
with a sheath knife tucked down the back of my jeans, 
going into the apartment of a neighbour whose boyfriend 
had just beat her up.  (I feared she might be beaten to 
death if I waited for the police to show up.)  I will 
spare you the description of the scene.  I felt sick, and 
angry at myself that I could do nothing to help, and 
hated myself for not getting there sooner, and wished 
that I could kill the bastard who beat her, and was very 
glad that he had gone before I arrived.  From that, 
ultimately, came a clearer recognition of my own hateful 
side, and of how much I shared with those I hated.

Opting out is not wrong, just impossible.  There is no 
escape.  We carry the seeds of evil with us.  All we can 
hope to do is keep seeing our own flaws clearly enough to 
disarm them and keep them in check. 

Let any saint come preaching self-understanding and 
forgiveness and peace and brotherly love, and let him or 
her just draw that first line of difference between "Us" 
and "Them" -- in 10 or 12 years, he and his followers 
will be drilling with full-auto weapons, stockpiling 
stolen arms, and planning to poison the neighors, all to 
protect "Our" commune against "Them."  The Bhagwan 
Rajneesh was writing and saying some fine things when he 
started out on his career.

Hawaii is relatively peaceful, which is one of the 
reasons I live here.  Even here in "Paradise", though, 
you don't get away from the dragon, and in rural America 
you don't get away from the dragon, and on tiny islands 
in the South Pacific you don't get away from the dragon.  
It lives where we live and it goes where we go.  

Maybe there are a few things we can do about it in the 
relative sense of the day-to-day world -- trying to see 
that evil gets punished, trying to live somewhere more-
or-less sane, trying to help kids grow up understanding 
that it is wrong to hate and kill the different.  There 
is not much we can do to heal our society.  There is 
nothing we can do about the dragon itself -- the 
brokenness in all of us -- except try to face it with some 
courage and dignity, and not lose our own humanity in the 
process of confronting it.  

  -- Clifton

--
cliftonr@netcom.com     Home: +1 808 521 9073  Work: +1 808 625 3234
Clifton Royston, Pope of the Church of the Subgenius in Paradise
"Have a revelation, the first one's free/Soon to be addicted to eternity" - HMR
Newsgroups: talk.bizarre