In the past couple of years, I've spent time clarifying my thought. It hasn't just been my thought that has needed purification, but my understanding of my being. These two factors are interlinked.
In all, there was something a little off-kilter. There was a part of me that was, to say, not part of me. I had misunderstood it as part of who I am, but in essence it is an aspect of general culture and who I am not.
The thing I am not, then, is a Christian soldier. Now, people will force me to put myself into a dialectical (argumentative) relationship with that trope, because anything that finally comes to the mind's surface in the form of conscious recognition seems to have a magic talisman effect. No matter. I don't mean anything in a magical way, but am referring to something akin to an extra limb -- a three armed Jennifer -- which I have realized has made life far from satisfactory on some levels.
The Christian soldier -- it is he who rises to a moral challenge. He is, indeed, very social, concerned about uprightness in the community -- no matter what community, any community will do. He will fight the good fight for all that is right.
Now this part of me, it seems, is holographic projection, from general society, onto my being. I've in many ways mistaken it for my actual being, but true to the analogy, a third arm gets in the way of the other two and creates obstructions for my proper functioning. I'm not this third arm, and I really don't care what you do with your life. I don't have a use for this moral function.
I'm going to write two books -- one is THE SANCTITY OF BEING, a philosophical meditation. The other book is SUGAR RUSH IN THE INFANTRY STAGE. I imagine it might be about interpellation (holographic projections of identity by others and confusing these with who one really is).
In any case, given that I am not a Christian soldier, I lead neither by example nor from the top. People who assert that I am somehow "authoritative" despite this will have their own consciences to try to appease. It's not for me to take authority over your development, because if I do that now, you will come back and blame me later when things go wrong. Then would we be? Stuck in the sado-masochistic dynamics of a Christian society and losing sight of fundamental nature. An animal crying out for meaning, food and pleasure in the wilderness is far more capable of expessing the fullness of its being than humans on a crusade.
Call me arrogant if you like, but I renounce the role. I was always so poor at it in any case, having my ideals and values formed in an entirely different society than the one we have today.
Christian soldiering is the quintessence of solipsistic and tautological reasoning: "I feel this way about what's real and what's normal and therefore everybody else ought to feel the same, or I will go to war."
To go to war for what? So that you never have to leave the comfort of your head? So that for every sentiment you happen to experience, you are assured that others must experience the selfsame emotional states as well?
But this is nonsense. My being may well be different from yours and this is no reason to go to war. One simply accepts the truth that one's being stops at a particular point -- the point where others' beings begin. One does not flow endlessly into them, that is a fundamental truth. One stops. One accepts the finite. One does not require that reassuring sense, where one being flows into another, unstoppably. Individuality itself renounces the perspective.
How does one address the other then? Not via the third arm of Christian soldiering, which flails around like an unstopping mechanism and wildly gesticulates, "We are all the same!"
We may be all the same in fundamentals, but that's hardly reassuring. You and I will die and you and I will certainly part company some day. Those are the only fundamentals we can count on.
The platitude that we are all alike just makes the horror of the real fundamentals more horrific. We are certainly so different in so many ways -- not even our deaths will be anything alike.
So enough of the reassuring nonsense of Christian crusades. Enough of trying to make the same what is different. That disrespects the sacred nature of existence, which is entailed in the shortness of the lives we live and in recognition that we struggle all alone. To gesticulate in the opposite direction, that we are really all the same no matter what, is to create a monstrous, terrible and mind-revolting horror: What if I was no longer able to be alone? What if my fundamental suffering and death were taken from me? (The fact of death is one thing, but the denial of recognition of the fact is more extreme.)
Let us not deprive others of their being, then, no matter how much we desire personal reassurance.
In all, there was something a little off-kilter. There was a part of me that was, to say, not part of me. I had misunderstood it as part of who I am, but in essence it is an aspect of general culture and who I am not.
The thing I am not, then, is a Christian soldier. Now, people will force me to put myself into a dialectical (argumentative) relationship with that trope, because anything that finally comes to the mind's surface in the form of conscious recognition seems to have a magic talisman effect. No matter. I don't mean anything in a magical way, but am referring to something akin to an extra limb -- a three armed Jennifer -- which I have realized has made life far from satisfactory on some levels.
The Christian soldier -- it is he who rises to a moral challenge. He is, indeed, very social, concerned about uprightness in the community -- no matter what community, any community will do. He will fight the good fight for all that is right.
Now this part of me, it seems, is holographic projection, from general society, onto my being. I've in many ways mistaken it for my actual being, but true to the analogy, a third arm gets in the way of the other two and creates obstructions for my proper functioning. I'm not this third arm, and I really don't care what you do with your life. I don't have a use for this moral function.
I'm going to write two books -- one is THE SANCTITY OF BEING, a philosophical meditation. The other book is SUGAR RUSH IN THE INFANTRY STAGE. I imagine it might be about interpellation (holographic projections of identity by others and confusing these with who one really is).
In any case, given that I am not a Christian soldier, I lead neither by example nor from the top. People who assert that I am somehow "authoritative" despite this will have their own consciences to try to appease. It's not for me to take authority over your development, because if I do that now, you will come back and blame me later when things go wrong. Then would we be? Stuck in the sado-masochistic dynamics of a Christian society and losing sight of fundamental nature. An animal crying out for meaning, food and pleasure in the wilderness is far more capable of expessing the fullness of its being than humans on a crusade.
Call me arrogant if you like, but I renounce the role. I was always so poor at it in any case, having my ideals and values formed in an entirely different society than the one we have today.
Christian soldiering is the quintessence of solipsistic and tautological reasoning: "I feel this way about what's real and what's normal and therefore everybody else ought to feel the same, or I will go to war."
To go to war for what? So that you never have to leave the comfort of your head? So that for every sentiment you happen to experience, you are assured that others must experience the selfsame emotional states as well?
But this is nonsense. My being may well be different from yours and this is no reason to go to war. One simply accepts the truth that one's being stops at a particular point -- the point where others' beings begin. One does not flow endlessly into them, that is a fundamental truth. One stops. One accepts the finite. One does not require that reassuring sense, where one being flows into another, unstoppably. Individuality itself renounces the perspective.
How does one address the other then? Not via the third arm of Christian soldiering, which flails around like an unstopping mechanism and wildly gesticulates, "We are all the same!"
We may be all the same in fundamentals, but that's hardly reassuring. You and I will die and you and I will certainly part company some day. Those are the only fundamentals we can count on.
The platitude that we are all alike just makes the horror of the real fundamentals more horrific. We are certainly so different in so many ways -- not even our deaths will be anything alike.
So enough of the reassuring nonsense of Christian crusades. Enough of trying to make the same what is different. That disrespects the sacred nature of existence, which is entailed in the shortness of the lives we live and in recognition that we struggle all alone. To gesticulate in the opposite direction, that we are really all the same no matter what, is to create a monstrous, terrible and mind-revolting horror: What if I was no longer able to be alone? What if my fundamental suffering and death were taken from me? (The fact of death is one thing, but the denial of recognition of the fact is more extreme.)
Let us not deprive others of their being, then, no matter how much we desire personal reassurance.
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