DESIDERATA
Go placidly amid the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible without surrender be on good terms with all persons. Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even the dull and the ignorant; they too have their story.
Avoid loud and aggressive persons, they are vexations to the spirit. If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain and bitter; for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself. Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.
Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time. Exercise caution in your business affairs; for the world is full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals; and everywhere life is full of heroism.
Be yourself. Especially, do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love; for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment it is as perennial as the grass.
Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth. Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness. Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself.
You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.
Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be, and whatever your labours and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life, keep peace with your soul.
With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.
[Max Ehrmann]
The nature of evil
What is this thing we call ‘evil’? Is it like ‘good’, a relative condition. or does it possess an actual power of its own, ‘The Devil protects his own.’ Is an ancient axiom, but what exactly does that mean? Mass murderer - Charles Manson said that if everything is one then there is no wrong. As the leader of a pseudo religious cult he had some (albeit mostly, and highly, warped) mystical knowledge, of course, and was alluding to the Buddhist and Hinduistic precept of one consciousness or the ‘cosmic self’. That is that we are all just part of a single entity of life implying that therefore there are fundamentally no individual different selves to injure. Which of course would seem fine so long as you're not a victim or experiencer of the injury or crime. And as transpersonal psychologist - Ken Wilber has implied, such an attitude merely constitutes a sort of 'esoteric' fascism or nihilism.
**** This has something to do with the question of the sublime (the universe is unfolding as it should notion, as in the poem Desiderata, above) and the mundane reality of of daily life. What I mean is shown clearly in the way the angel (Clarence) admonishes George Baily (in the film 'It's a Wonderful Life) about him trying to commit suicide over a thing like money. George blurts back his defense. 'Comes in pretty handy down here bud!' Which of course is true. We may know in the vast scheme of things that it plummets into insignificance, but if that's the case why bother making any effort in life at all. Let's just be irresponsible and lazy and let the universe sort it all out in the wash. Huh, chaos! Exactly! And in fact the word used to define evil by the ancient Greeks was chaos. (21st October 2007)
In Anglo-Saxon times, it was the Viking. In medieval times, it was the dark knight. In the sixteenth century, it was the pirate. In the seventeenth century - the highwayman. In the eighteenth century - the outlaw; and as Jack the Ripper reportedly wrote - he (the first well known serial killer) gave birth to the twentieth century. If we are all honest, there is something exciting, arousing, erotic, provocative and seductive about incarnations of evil. Viz. Darth Vador and count Dracula with their strong tall statures, deep solemn voices and swaying dark capes. There has developed a certain romance in our times for the serial killer, war and terrorism. Hollywood is replete with very successful films on these themes. Even some documentary Programs on TV about armed conflict, terrorism and crime often (albeit unintentional) border on a form of entertainment and glamourisation of such themes.
**** The SS battalions were made up of intelligent, elegant, athletic, handsome and tall men. Many heterosexual women are readily attracted to such wicked, dark, smoulderingly handsome brutes; just as heterosexual men are attracted to the sexy femme fatal and dominatrix. Black uniforms and clothing are the general rule of thumb. These aspects are also very resplendent and prevalent in the sub and dom propensities in gay, lesbian, bisexual and heterosexual BDSM fetish scenes. The very reason many of us enjoy disaster, thriller, crime and horror stories and films is possibly for these very reasons. We are readily attracted to darkness, risk and danger because it challenges, arouses and excites us. It makes us feel alive. The question is what then must we do in coming to terms with this innate drive, but in a way that best equally serves both our individual and collective needs and rights. In achieving this there may be some truth in that old saying: 'Give the Devil his due.' (23rd October 2007)
Video games and many of the films on TV stations, like ‘Zone Horror’ for instance, are based on depictions of rampant sado-masochistic serial killers or savage aliens, monsters and demons. They often constitute what might be classed as the inimical ‘bogey man, or woman’, Psychopathic killers are portrayed as conscienceless, soulless android like entities who must be annihilated at all costs, but not before we have sufficiently gorged ourselves on an orgy of their violent and often perverse and depraved sexual eroticism. The victims are usually beautiful fair maidens and handsome young men, some innocent, some ‘pain in the ass’ idiots. By the climax of the film, the director has groomed our righteous indignation at the horrors the killer (or killers) have grotesquely perpetrated on their hapless victims to the point where we are invited to cry out in our hearts, if not out loud: ‘die, you SOB bastard – die!’ And of course - die they do, eventually; preferably the more horrible the better, eh? As Clint Eastwood (Harry) says to the ‘scum bag’ of a rapist killer in the film ‘Dirty Harry’: ‘Do you wanna make my day punk, Well do yeah?
**** Nowadays of course, many of the horror genre serial killer films will have the killer somehow escaping at the end of the film (Viz. Hannibal Lecter, the directors of the torture factory in the ‘Hostel’ movies, and the ingenius villain in the ‘Saw’ movies). This is not essentially new of course because the Dracula movies always seem to depict the count being inadvertently resurrected to begin another orgy of erotic blood sucking violence. There is a part of us that wants the devious villain to be reborn, partly because of the erotic arousal they evoke in us, but also so we can recreate the challenge of overcoming great evil and finish up killing them all over again. It’s okay if the villain reincarnates provided there is some sort of vindication by the end of the story. Many of the Doctor Who and Star Trek stories are portrayed in this light. Win - lose is acceptable for so called evil characters, but evil must not be allowed to ultimately flourish and win, or we feel deflated (e.g. the films - ‘Seven’ and ‘Hitchhiker,’ where the death, or destruction, of the villain is what the villain most wants. We are given the impression of them winning. It’s a very disconcerting ending). All of this is probably because we are nearly all born with an innate sense of justice, or a need for balance and rebalance. (29th October 2007)
Good Vs Evil (Copyright)
