The tyranny of absolutes

 The far-right and the far-left share a common chain of emotional, psychological, and intellectual choking….the rule of absolutes! In America, and also in much of the west, we are no longer talking about or debating or even writing about ‘relative positions’ about anything. Ideologies have long-since been abandoned. Specific religious dogmas, too, have been shredded and burned.

Radicalization, whether initiated by the far-right or the far-left, and then championed by various human mouths-with-megaphones, for some vague, highly charged, deeply motivating and life-changing epithet, or perception or ideal or command, depending on the receiver’s readiness to embrace, could be considered analogous to hydroponic farming….dropping seeds into warm water, encased in a warm, climate-controlled environment generating growth more rapidly and predictably than the time-worn ‘in-the-ground’ farming that, for some crops takes considerable time….an oak, perhaps generations, a weed, overnight.

As human agents for what are now considered ‘armies’ of devotees, for what is offered as the self-declared, righteous, God-inspired path to a perceived and envisioned global ‘utopia,’ many young men, especially, are vacuumed into mental and psychological, and intellectual convictions the implications of which they, and likely not their prosletyzers are  minimally acquainted at best, or even anticipating or choosing to contemplate. Glib and highly seductive ‘seeds’ of power influence followers, hanging images of stardom, and adulation, even vestal virgins, on screens and then in fertile and hungry imaginations so highly addictive and compelling in a world that has slipped into imitation-mode, (borrowed from Rene Girard), we all have to take note.  That such a mode of imitation what another has and what I desperately want and thereby consider that I need and I must have, infused with steroidal digital internet range and power, has spread its tentacles into virtually millions of hands, and in front of millions of eyes and minds. Many, if not most of those eyes and minds and hearts have not as yet been exposed to, and practiced in the disciplines and demands of deep, reflective and life-giving critical thought.

Instant everything, eye-candy, power to defuse and destroy any ‘enemy’ whether in a virtual game, on the internet or in real life; short-cuts to ‘the top’ inevitably measured in dollars, numbers of adoring/or hating followers, crowd-sourced and highly marketed political and propaganda campaigns, (especially championed by young men who ‘love’ what they are doing at the top of their own political and psychological and social and financial pyramid….this a receipt for a collision.

And, apparently, given the early fall-out, think Peggy Noonan in the Wall Street Journal (‘Charlie Kirk’s Assassination Feels Like a Hinge Point,’ yesterday), two of the protagonists in the current conflict of absolutes, one with a microphone the other with an assault rifle collided on Wednesday this week, in Utah.

Of course, not only are both ‘colliders’ effectively euthanized, one physically, the other politically and likely criminally, as is evident in all conflicts arising from the tenacious and adamantine hold on absolute truth, the truth may finally warrant a national burial ceremony in the United States.

While there was, and still is not, a single person alive, or perhaps even a group of people, who could have successfully apprised either Charlie Kirk nor Tyler Robinson of the hollowness of their absolutes. Their respective tenaciousness, intransigence, immoveable and unrelenting convictions to absolute positions, taken together, forms a mirror into which each and every one of us can and really must peer.

It is not a conflict only between Republicans and Democrats; it is not a conflict between capitalism and socialism; it is not a conflict between Christians and Muslims; it is not a conflict between whites and blacks; it is not a conflict between East and West; it is not a conflict between environmental protectionists and environmental hoaxers; it is not a conflict between book banners and a the literarians; it is not a conflict between men and women; it is not a conflict between Jews and Arabs; it is not a conflict between Russians and Ukrainians; it is not q conflict between East and West; it is not a conflict between China and the West; ti is not a conflict between Putin and the West; it is not a conflict between conservative and liberal Christians; it is not a conflict between the rich and the poor; it is not a conflict between urban and rural; it is not a conflict between immigrants and birthers; it is not a conflict between drug cartels and addicted dealers and their consumers; it is not a conflict between Trump (add Fox, Miller, Bannon etc.)  and Pelosi (add your choice: Shumer, Harris, Biden, MSNBC)

There is a conflict, and campaign to take over the human psyche; some have called in a take-over of the ‘soul’ of America…and that could be extended to a global ‘soul’.

Life and death, not only of individual human beings, but of life on this planet as we know it, is  rearing its head on every continent. Different names and faces hold headline status, as do different child-advocates, in different jurisdictions. Different philanthropic foundations, often through the altruistic generosity of billionaires, attempt to put a finger in the many dykes that are all over-flowing their capacity to control the ‘flood’.

And, as Pogo reminds, “We have met the enemy, and he is us!” from a famous Walt Kelly comic strip in1970.

Attempting to reach above the personal, and the literal, empirical and the classical conditioning processes in which we are all embedded, to the advantage of a decreasing number and the disadvantage of millions, Karen Armstrong has some comparative ‘religious’ insight that we ‘borrow’ here in humility, in anxiety, in some despair, and in some limited degree of hope and aspiration

As Basil explained, we can never know the ineffable ousia (essence, substance, being) of God, but can glimpse only its traces or effects (energeia) in our time-bound, sense-bound world. It is clear that the meditation, yoga, and rituals that work aesthetically on a congregation have, when practiced assiduously, over a lifetime, a marked effect on the personality—and effect that is another form of natural theology. There is no dramatic ‘born-again’ conversion but a slow, incremental, and imperceptible transformation. Above all. The habitual practice of compassion and the Golden Rule ‘all day and every day’ demands perpetual kenosis (Emptying out). The constant ‘stepping outside’ o four own preferences, convictions, and prejudices is an ekstasis (outside of self experience) that is not a glamorous rapture, but as Confucius’s pupil, Yan Hui explained, is itself the transcendence we seek. Th effect of these practices cannot give us concrete information about God; it is certainly not a scientific ‘proof’.’ But something indefinable happens to people who involve themselves in these disciplines with commitment and talent. This ‘something’ remains opaque to those who do not undergo these disciplines, however, just as the Elusinian ‘mystery’* sounded trivial and absurd to somebody who remained obstinately outside the cult hall and refused to undergo the initiation. (Karen Armstrong, The Case for God, pps.327-328)

*Elusinian mysteries were secret, annual initiations in ancient Greece, centred on the cult of the goddesses Demeter and Persephone.