Friday, January 21, 2011

IN THE WORLD OF MEN THERE EXISTS
GODS AND MONSTERS

Is man merely a mistake of God's? Or God merely a mistake of man's? -Friedrich NietzscheBefore I get all buttery, let me advise my more theologically-inspired readers that I mean absolutely NO offense by this entry and I will understand if you decide that you have had enough of me. I don’t presume to have any knowledge or expertise other than my own instincts and place in the bio-sphere. My agnosticism does not inspire me to deliberately tempt sacrilege as I write what the stories of Jared Lee Loughner and Kermit Godsell move me to put down to record. With that, let the ramblings commence.


Or should I have said continue. At least they began almost immediately in the media, after the first reports of the shootings in Tucson were being made, with many claiming their special turf to set their soapbox. What annoyed me was the rush to paint Loughner as an example ANYTHING, be it all that is wrong with our political culture and gun/militaristic obsessions, because they all missed the larger and to me more obvious point – Jared Loughner is literally insane. His irrationality was not documented and going by what those around him had to say, his descent was fairly quick. I can understand why in his case you had the people who were not aware of the exact depth of his insanity. Who knows how long it was brewing in him, his particular madness and when did he reach his tipping point? No one knew of his obsession with Congresswoman Gifford and as far as his demons, they were only hinted at (and I use that term loosely because his behavior strange enough to have earned him an expulsion from a COMMUNITY college) as far as his parents and their involvement… recently I had a conversation about that with Nixxie… and I thought as I tend to do when someone’s child explodes, how society has encroached on the juvenile world. I don’t know if it is a situation where kids are growing up faster or life is forcing cubs to hunt for their own. And in the wild, at least on ‘Big Cat Diary’, juvenile left in the wild on their own, are in situations that almost never work out well. But I don’t know how much Jared’s madness was a result of his experience or because he was defective, you feel me?


Now when you talk about media and society making it possible for evil to fester and infect the world, this story about the abortion mill in Philadelphia is the one for you. Yes it was an institutional fail, but the ‘institution’ that truly failed was society. I won’t place this solely on the government agencies that failed their due diligence. But even with Roe v. Wade bringing abortion out of the darkness, the stigma and the lack of a real reproductive health education or health care, permitted a man who was not even certified in obstetrics or gynecology, allowed this cat do maim and kill women and babies.


You will have to click on Dr. Godsell's link for details. I can’t bear the thought of describing the horrors this man visited upon women. But I thought in a flash of the kind of things that Nazi doctors did to the imprisoned in concentration camps as I read about or some of the things that American doctors did on black (as I don’t think the Tuskegee Experiment was even the LEAST of the ‘surveys’ that were done on Blacks in America…) people, you see where evil is an exceeding human trait.

…AND ALL THE DEMONS OF HELL WERE LOOSED…

A nun who was working in Rwanda at the time of the barbarism that took place there made a comment to the effect that ‘Hell was empty as all the demons were running loose’, during the ethnic and tribal cleansing that took place there in the late 80’s. I remember that and I recall being in a conversation with a person doing their best Edward G. Robinson and taunting another person with ‘Where’s your God NOW, Moses’. That was when I came to the conclusion that with so much unmistakable sin going on here in this dimension, then there could only be one other place for anyone to go, IF there is somewhere to go.

My logic follows that despite my epistemological weaknesses, that there IS something beyond this life. We may die but the energy that we are made up doesn’t stop existing because we are not conscious. Logically, it is as likely that our atoms come back together as something, possible enough of them get together to where a human being feels as if they had experienced this existence before, I don’t know. Should there be somewhere for us to go, there could only be ONE place for our souls, ALL of them to come to together.

In my mind, that place has always been Heaven. There is enough of Hell available for anyone to experience if they wanted, a lot of it less metaphorically than anyone should ever have to experience. What is also worth noting is that all of these constructs were created by the mind of men, and anything that another man claims can be questioned.

As I end this mishmash I would leave you with this—both emprical evidence and faith end and begins at the same place for me. And neither one picks up where either of them ends. Hell is a place on Earth and heaven is a playground.

6 comments:

Toon said...

I don't believe in a god. I'm too old to have imaginary friends.

Unknown said...

One of the things I remember from the 60's:

God is dead. - Nietzsche

Nietzsche is dead. - God

betty said...

I truly respect your opinions Mark as I know you truly respect mine and I'm not going to argue against yours, just wanted to say that I know there is a God and to me he is not an imaginary friend, but alive and real. I have seen and experienced too many things that were not coincidental and can be listed perhaps miraculous for those who may believe in miracles that proved to me time after time there was a God and he was actively working in my and my family's life. There is a heaven, there is a hell. The Bible, which I believe to be a truthful book, and Jesus, who I believe to have told the truth ALL THE TIME describes what is heaven and what is hell and who will be in heaven and who will be in hell. I don't think hell is this earth. Hell is the absence of God. God is present on this earth. Anyway, I agree with you, the shooter in Tucson was definitely insane. You don't know much about his parents and his upbringing. You wonder if they suspected something and tried to get him help but were not able to get him help because he functioned somewhat normally most of the time. Unfortunately, it takes tragic events sometimes like this for people to see what the parents suspected all along and tried to get help for that there was something actually going on that needed attention. Been there done that (though not to this degree of course) where no one will listen when you know there is something "off" in your child.

anyway, those are my thoughts this Friday morning.

I hope you are doing as well as you can Mark

betty

DB said...

Who is Charles Manson?

I think the Earth is a polayground also. Mark, a vast dangerous game, a contest between the good guys and the bad guys. The incident at Tucson shows us that we havene't learned how to win the game yet.

We get a lot of news about the the shooter and the Congresswoman, but when the next unimaginable and heinous act of humans against humans bubbles to the top of the cauldren it will be all but forgotten about. And that's the real tragedy.

D

Beth said...

After the shooting, I know I wrote something about Palin being partly responsible for the undercurrent of hate in this country. I stand by that. I don't blame her directly for the tragedy, but if someone is mentally unstable, wouldn't a violent atmosphere of hate contribute to that instability, perhaps forcing them to their tipping point? I think so.

But yes, the broader question for me, is why was this asshole able to buy guns and extended clips? We need to have this discussion. Why should anyone need to have a 30-round clip? If you want to target practice, hey, knock yourself out. But shoot your ten, and reload. Why is that such a big effin' deal?

Of course, I've had the discussion on Facebook in which people say that by that logic we should ban cars, too, because they kill people. What a ludicrous argument.

Anyway, you know how I feel about the whole religious issue. I'm with Russ on this one. I have never seen any evidence of a true miracle. Congresswoman Giffords' recovery is being called a "miracle." I call it the lucky break of the bullet path, an intern who did his best to help her immediately afterwards, and the hard work of a whole bunch of dedicated professionals. Nothing miraculous there...just random chance and good people stepping up and doing what they're supposed to do.

I reject blind faith.

Ken Riches said...

Interesting concept on energy, I agree that it cannot just disappear, physics does not support that. Must contemplate.