I see
that we are “occupied by our thoughts” and, depending on where they “come from,”
we are just this side of absolutely insane, having created and now living in a
world which is seen as “normal.” If I were a “proper Christian” with a
particular Christian point of view, I would rightfully say that “the world is
evil and the devil rules.” It would even seem, given the ground of being of a
President who uses mind control by constantly interjecting his own sick and
insane thoughts to create a mindset and a direction and a confusion (a “direction
of confusion and divisiveness”) and instructs his circle also to do this, that
what the Christians call Antichrist
is quite alive and well and very active in the minds of the masses and the
elite in this country and also throughout the world. The sane and the holy are
diminished, while the insane and the unholy are becoming rampant. Witness not
only Trump’s followers but 92% of the Republican Party itself at a recent
count. Minds—and souls—are being subverted by evil. People have not learned as
children how to be humane and sane in their humanness, and to behave with a
sense of self-respect and respect of others, with a self-controlling sense of
basic morality. Michael Novak, in Belief
and Unbelief, touches on this: “As Aristotle remarks, unless a man is in
his youth taught to feel correctly pleasure and pain, and shame and pride, he
will not even have the data for correct moral judgment of the noble and the
ignoble; he will never have tasted the one, nor have been taught to recognize
the other” (64).
Stupidity-as-normal and hate-as-normal
are a most dangerous mix, and not specific to either right-wing or left-wing.
The normalizing of such ignorance and its repetition that acts to brainwash
whole populations is most dangerous indeed. And propagandists both feed and fan
fires of stupidity and hatred, unleashing violence upon us through both the
masses and the elite. It has probably always been like this throughout human
history with the difference being that now we have instant worldwide web and
instant technological weaponry, the perfect mix for profound destruction and
death.
I don’t see that great numbers of
people will necessarily “come around” at this point; this is surely not the
norm. After the social fabric was all but destroyed in “the Terror” of the
French Revolution, after the best were guillotined, most realized that it was
again time for national order and safety for all. I hope Americans have enough
basic sanity to realize what is going on and make the necessary changes without
resorting to extremes that escalate, creating their own infernos that burn
everything to the ground. I don’t see that “public education” will affect those
who make themselves “blind followers.” However, I am of the belief that large
number of people are capable of “seeing the light,” as it were, of having the
cover pulled from their eyes. In the meantime, I for one can do what I can do. For
me that translates as writing and sharing what I write as best I can, but
perhaps more to the point, observing myself and the “thoughts that occupy me
and thus direct my actions” through my personal practice of zazen. To be able
to see oneself is to be able to see how oneself is in the world, and what one
contributes to or detracts from existence as a whole on the planet. We each
make it better or worse—for ourselves and everyone else.
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