Who Were We While We Lived

By Alice, a blogger — January 2006

Alice said...

That is not at all what I meant. There’s nothing “normal” about these people, and the problem, as I see it, is that neither they nor most of US fully appreciate the horror of what we are making, either through our actions or through our inaction.

The closest I can come to describing my feelings as I watch the nightmare unfold, is to quote Jesus on the cross, when he said, “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

Any parent of small children will know what I’m talking about; sometimes children, in the grip of fury or fear, or even mindlessly having fun, do things with appalling consequences that they cannot comprehend.

Believe me, I am not trivializing the evil that men do, when I say that many of these people are no more aware of the true consequences of their actions, than the six-year old who stabs his little sister in the stomach because she broke his toy.

Allow me to speculate that many of these people are driven by a deep anguish and despair, tortured by their own thoughts and frightening emotions, that leave no room for altruism or sympathy for the victims who happen to get in their way.

Alternatively, they are dead inside, and will go to any lengths to feel SOMETHING, even fear, recasting their emotional deficiency as an advantage over the rest of us, who are subject to such crippling emotions as guilt, empathy or doubt.

In a way, they’re right, because their ruthlessness, the sheer magnitude of their crimes and their lies, the breathtaking hubris of their projects (dominating the globe, enslaving humanity, slaughtering hundreds of thousands of people, conquering space), leave us trembling, as we must struggle first to overcome our own disbelief and unwillingness to see what is right in front of our eyes.

As I see it, at this point, three paths open before us: one leads to madness, one leads to despair and bitterness, and the other leads to freedom and true power.

The first path is the one we take when we cringe away from the truth and pretend not to see. We medicate ourselves and sink gratefully into a cocoon of platitudes and canned “reality,” soothing ourselves with drugs, mindless consumption, gratefully submerging our individuality in the artificial and manipulated collective identity that is beamed to us via the media.

Increasingly, even our knowledge of and relations with other people and the world are filtered through the corporate media, so that we are isolated and vulnerable to being re-engineered via emotional manipulation. Brainwashed, in other words.

The second path is to “rage against the machine,” pounding with our puny fists against the brick wall of external reality, until we are either defeated or destroyed.

Shouting until we are hoarse will not make people hear, and allowing ourselves to be consumed by hatred, rage or fear will only add our names to those of the broken victims they leave in their wake.

The third path is the only one that, in my view, provides us with some hope. It’s the one we take when we realize that the only question that ultimately has any meaning is: “Who am I?”

A long time ago, in a political science class, we were shown a short film (fictional or based on a true story, I don’t remember) set in Poland during WWII: some Nazi soldiers were lining up gypsies to be shot, after having made them dig their own mass grave.

At the last moment, one of the soldiers refused to raise his rifle against the gypsies, so his commanding officer made him join the line of victims. The last scene was of him clasping the hand of the gypsy next to him before being shot.

At the time, I was around 17 years old, I thought the soldier was nuts, and argued in class that his gesture was the epitome of futility.

As I said, that was a long time ago; over the years, I often thought about that film and the dilemma it presented. It took years to fathom the meaning and value of his action, but now I hope and pray that I would do the same in such a situation. (Who can know, until it happens?)

Not at all out of some death-wish, or desire to be a martyr, but out of self-preservation, in the deepest sense of the term.

Metaphorically, that soldier refused to be “food” for the egregore created and animated by hatred, fear and despair.

Which brings us to the “holographic universe,” a concept that some people have taken as an excuse for passivity and meaninglessness. I disagree. If the universe can be seen as a sort of feed-back tool for greater self-actualization, then it becomes clear that the question “who am I” is the only one that matters.

It’s the question that is being answered by the universe, whether we realize this or not, and the sooner we understand that, the sooner we can stop banging around aimlessly and actually put our energies to work creating beauty and harmony out of the chaos we currently find ourselves in.

While we all agree that there are people working to destroy and sow fear and hatred, not many people have proposed concrete steps that we can take to protect ourselves from them.

And yet, it’s obvious, though it might not be as thrilling or “cool” as erudite discussions of various demons or “soul-sucking entities.”

Rather than poring over obscene grimoires for enlightenment, why not try dusting off the wisdom of someone like St. Francis of Assisi and see what happens?

“Lord, make me an instrument of your peace; where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; and where there is sadness, joy.”

I would humbly add, that this all, of course, begins with one’s self, then one’s home and family, neighborhood, community, and so on.

The point is not to be so ambitious that one is inevitably disappointed and then possibly defeated. I suspect that the success of one’s progress depends more on the quality than the quantity of the means that we find to express the best that is in us.

And as we become more ourselves, we become harder to break, harder to deceive, and we become efficient conduits for the kind of power against which those poor, lost souls are truly helpless.

All of us will die. The only question that matters to us in the end, is who were we while we lived?

Our constant curiosity is key
to watching what’s being created.
~ David Moorhead