"We learn from history that when good and evil struggle against each other, initially evil tends to take the upper hand until all of a sudden it disintegrates and collapses."
--Ghandi
perhaps right now is the time to take these words to heart. with such an utter despair gripping the world, the feeling like we can't change anything even if we did try, that it's all over so we should just try to survive every day--and indeed, that is all we can do--we need something to hold onto.
i for one don't want this world to end. because even if we are completely fucked up as a species, even if we are a cancer upon the planet, there are things worth saving. paintings. art. beautiful writing. love. yes, it sounds trite, but i would die if the world became a place where i didn't receive poetry from my boyfriend at odd hours of the night just because he was thinking about me. that sort of thing is worth saving. a mother's love for her child--the kind of love that makes death seem a small price to pay for the continued well-being of your son or daughter. good music. good food. laughter. good movies. even bad movies, because without the bad how would we know what good is?
evil is necessary for the proliferation of good. i do not subscribe to the secularized christian view of good always vanguishing evil for ever and always triumphing and that rewards come to those who wait. rewards come to those who work. the real reward of a good life is seeing the effects of your deeds, not some imaginary feast in the afterlife. i do not even believe in good or evil, per se, because those who we consider evil do not consider themselves evil. it is just a different perspective to them. how do we know we are not the evil ones?
we don't. we just feel in our hearts that things should be run differently, and we can see the effects of the current administration on the planet (not just the US--i'm referring to humanity's administration as a whole) as being generally bad for any other species here.
it could be said that this is supposed to happen--that we'll die out and the world will balance itself out again. even if that's true, how can someone, in good conscience, allow what's going on to happen?
we carry this false belief that accumulating wealth is the ultimate goal of life--or that being the most beautiful is, or the smartest, or the life of the party. these are high school ideas that we carry into life. they come from a culture of estrangement, the culture we were born into. we see ourselves as separate from everything and one else, and therefore we don't see our actions as affecting anyone else. the culture of estrangement, of power-over, of hierarchy, makes teenagers of adults. we've got a bunch of self-centered (admittedly not always knowingly) people running around doing things to accumulate whatever they can until they die, at which point none of this stuff matters anyway.
what matters is not being better than every one else. what matters is to be the best you can be, you, yourself, your individual self, while retaining the knowledge that you are not alone. you are brother or sister to everyone else in the whole world, to every tree, flower, bush, bee, bird, and wolf--you are a strand in a great web that stretches beyond this planet and out into the universe, that is the universe, and energy is what you are made of. the force does not flow thru us, because then it is seen as separate from us. the force is us. and how we choose to be, what kind of people we choose to be determines the 'light' or 'darkness' of it.
the point is not to do good.
the point is to do better.
and to remember, that at the end of the day, you are not alone. you may feel alone. especially if you are disconnected from friends, family, or just like-minded acquantiances.
and to remember, that no matter how futile it all seems, that no matter how much you want to give up for lack of any visible change, that despite all this, your actions will matter. because whether you are directly or indirectly a factor, things will change. they always do. and doing something, whether or not it works, empowers you.
this should not be about guilt.
this should be about feeling good about picking up the litter on your daily walk, even if it's back twofold the next day, because you made a difference in the world's fabric of energy, if only for a second. seeing litter is a depressing sight for most people. by picking it up, you are improving a small corner of the world, for a little bit, allowing some light to shine there, which will touch other people in their busy lives for a while, and reach out to touch the others they see or deal with, and so on around the world.
and the same goes for any little bit of activism. whether it be hugathon, chaining yourself to a fence to protest a nuclear reactor being built, standing on a corner with a sandwich board sign, or blowing up parliament to prove a point, to break down old structures so that new ones may be born out of the rubble.
this evolutionary stage we're on has grown stagnant. we cannot allow ourselves to live in fear. we must switch to a system of power-from-within, of acknowledging everything as sacred--sacred being whatever we value for being itself. our bodies are sacred, and what comes out of our bodies--here i speak of shit--is sacred, because it composts, and out of compost comes new life. life is a cycle. water-based sewage systems are probably one of the stupidest ideas we've had as humans. they disrupt that cycle.
so do the burial systems of our dead. cremation is more sensible than being put in your best clothing into a wooden box that will take longer to decompose than you will to be lowered into the ground where you will take up space that can be used by the living, but it's still pretty useless. my father wants to be composted when he dies. he can't, because it's illegal. the law says that instead of being useful when dead, he must rot where he will feed worms who will make the cemetary dirt very rich in nutrients, but it's being used as a cemetary so that's a moot point.
these systems we have in place prevent us from being the best we can be, as humans, and as mammals. we forget this alot, but we are mammals, so far as we can tell. we are apes, so far as we know. we must accept our place in the animal kingdom outside of biology class and work on making our place more of a niche than a gouged-out hold in the ecosystem's wall. we obviously have some purpose on this planet. let's develop it.
maybe it's art, of all kinds. music, words, paintings, textiles, the list goes on. maybe it's our mental capacities. we are capable of great things. but while we are officially secular, we are still ruled by fear-based, monotheistic, patriarchal thought-forms that teach us different is bad, rule by many is heretical, and female is dark and dirty.
newsflash: we are all dark and dirty. women bleed. men poop. humans eat, piss, fuck, shit, sleep, fart, and burp our way thru our lives, and try to hide it all because it's so 'shameful'. the ones who embrace all these natural bodily functions and the natural state of nudity are 'deviants' who must be 'locked-up'.
if we're so fucking secular, then why are we so illogical about the simplest things?
these beliefs are based on fear. fear from a triad of patriarchal abrahamic religions that still rule the world, like it or not. we claim to be secularized, but the truth is that men are valued over women, white over black/other colors, and the One over the Many.
i hate the terms white or black magick used so frequently by new followers of the craft. it emphasizes the belief that white = pure good righteous virtuous pure perfect ruling class and black = dirty bad immoral lewd impure slave class. the very usage in a power-from-within religion of hierarchial terms comes from the fact that almost all of us are raised in the culture of estrangement, and must come to the culture of connectivity, of immanence, from that place, and so must shed those old ideas. it's easier to fall back into old systems than to actively work at creating new ones.
this world is full of horrible things.
this world is full of precious and wonderful things.
what do you want to be humanity's last legacy?
