Monster

Be it sex, fortune, substance, or simply status, man uses these things to satiate the spiritual cipher boiling internally. The eventuality of this declination is inevitable. The very thing used to fill the void exacerbates it.

Popular culture perpetuates delusion.  This delusion drives the erosion of our moral fiber. Thus, collectively, we have no sense of belonging, gratitude, value, validity, or security.

We insist on feeding each other the fallacy that somehow the solution to our problems lies within us. How can it be? Does the solution lie within the same vessel within which the problem lies? Riddle me that. Like it or not, the reason we all love the “self-help” system is because it essentially makes us God. We are become the Divine. Who wouldn’t like that? How could we, the ultimate causes of confusion, calamity, chaos, and crisis, secretly be holding the key to salvation within ourselves? If only we’d unlock our potential!

Just examine the “oppressive patriarchy”  or “the self-esteem movement” or the “pull yourself up by your bootstraps,” folks. Weak, wishy-washy, victim-centric, or cruel, harsh, and insensitive.

However, aren’t the two ideologies essentially the same?

Either way, we place ourselves into the center of the universe. Nothing is our fault or every success is because of our own resolute will.  Or both.

Perspectives differ, but the essential problem remains the same. We lack power. We do not have the ability to summon the power necessary to defeat evil. Plain and simple. No matter how you slice it. Evil has thrived, grown, and invaded our existence and we feverishly search for the answer to it.

This isn’t to deride human potential. Humans are capable of amazing, remarkable things. Created in the image of God and given gifts from which society has greatly benefitted. However, we need to understand the level of pride with which we suffer from. We need to understand the forces we are up against. It is of the utmost importance to understand that we are a part of the problem. If we understand this, and we understand that the answers need to transcend ourselves, then we have discovered a good thing, the greatest of all things.

Ultimately, we gasp and clutch our pearls as we become the victims of a self-centered crisis. This fictitious travesty, our victimhood, devolves from a fleeting thought to an apparition, and finally to a demonic manifestation and reincarnation of our thirteen-year-old selves. Impulse becomes the master. The search for comfort and gratification clouds out any rational judgment from consciousness. We deteriorate into savages. We allow a warped perception to fuel a base and misguided instinct. Couple warped instincts, with insecurity and selfishness,  then satisfaction becomes a priority.  Here is the moment character, integrity, and discipline part ways.  Sometimes this corruption is slow and subtle, sometimes it is almost instantaneous.  The search for pleasure blots out the reality of the harm we will cause from this descent into the darkness.

“Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster… for when you gaze long into the abyss. The abyss gazes also into you.”

Enigmatic and poignant prose from Nietzsche. Can we imagine the countless hours of thought, the pages of literature, the gallons of ink, the exhaustion of breath, and the energy expelled, examining the seeming futility of the human condition?

All of this work, soul searching, writing, pontificating, bloviating, waxing poetic, and we always come to the same conclusion. You are the problem, and you are also the solution. I’ll save you the cost of admission to a seminar or the twenty bucks you’d spend on a book.

Countless people have sought gratification, or even higher purpose, through indulgence and chased happiness across a desert of pain and loneliness. This vain transgression of avoiding the worst parts of ourselves actually accentuates those portions we would like to hide. This veil of lies is sewn with thread composed of fear and denial. It is during this feverish and self-centered pursuit of, “meaning,” we are separated. This selfish quest is transformative and painful. Our current status, the goings-on, and general madness are what it means to become the worst version of ourselves during the selfish pursuit of gratification and comfort.

I have spent a good portion of my time on this Earth restless, irritable, and discontented. I sought peace through chaos, I looked for comfort in pain, I searched for serenity in insanity. As I rummaged for relief I perpetuated my own deterioration and degradation. I became the monster I was fighting. My peers were baffled by my self-destructive and pathological behavior. I suffered from spiritual sickness outside the remedy of man’s faux antidotes. Fear ran through my veins like Mississippi creek water. Internally, a tempest loomed within my heart. A storm surged with tremendous power and I continually surrendered to the disaster. It was in the squall of temptation and insecurity that I developed a selfish propensity to assure that an instinctual need was met. This is always without regard to the consequence. There is never any consideration for the people hurt, the harm that is caused, and the general calamity in the wake of a man saturated with fear and insecurity. It is within this cauldron of self-loathing and ego-driven madness that a convenient amnesia sets in.

What really sets man apart from beast is set within the deepest parts of ourselves. The knowing that our instincts cannot always win out over what is right, just, good, and moral. How blinded are we as a society when our culture is driven by instinct and instinct alone? This behavior makes us no better than the bloodthirsty monster. What’s more, is that we know better. We know what is civil, good, just, right, and moral. Save some grey exceptions. Our instincts are kept in check by our morality. The God-given and so defined foundation of our design. It’s is inarguable we are governed by the moral law. Even the most ardent atheist would have to agree.

The Faustian bargain is attractive. It is seductive and pushes men to the edge of morality until they plummet into obscurity. Souls die in the catacombs of despair and are deafened by a harmony of death rattles in a choir conducted by misery. Opposing temptation is warfare and there are lives at stake. This battle rages on and propels human beings to be in collision with one another. The friction is unbearable and the pain is extraordinary. Within this battlefield, nomads wander and contemplate, “meaning.” We seek satisfaction and never consider the costs. To one extent or another, we all participate in this battle. Our denial is dressed as a conscientious objector with a white flag in hand, muttering deflated soliloquies about morality and curiosity. The foe is subtle and called many names. Some say it is just human nature, others regard it as a flaw in the mechanics and chemistry of the human psyche, still, more believe this foe is Satan himself. This is the human condition. The legacy is a hopeless and painful vacuum.

The perpetrator may be unseen, but the consequences are not. These incidences are sketched almost lightly for entertainment within our culture. The consequences are labeled as great works because of their parallelism with life. The Faustian bargain is cyclical. There is only one choice. We must search for a new pleasure to cover up the guilt from the last one. As his guilt escalates so do the escapades. The guilt, shame, and remorse become a granite boulder fastened between our shoulder blades. We judge others for their flaws only because we hate ourselves. We pretend we don’t care, denial becomes our code, and we descend into the black.

The explosion of self-destruction is ignited by self-gratification. It is only when the shroud of plausible deniability is lifted and we are forced to look at the destruction from our wrath that we see. Man is constantly searching for his own definition. Autonomy, or “self-law.” This ideology rules the day. This search perpetuates a fatal disconnection from humanity. When we are consumed with ourselves we are lost. The monster becomes us. We freeze as the abyss stares through us understanding our weaknesses and vulnerability. The Faustian bargain is not a bargain. It is a concession.

Can it be said that looting, rioting, and destruction are a manifestation of what we truly are? Could it be true? Do you think the men who worked as Nazi camp guards were different from you and me? Do you think it is notable when the neighbors of serial killers are interviewed, and they point out that they, the killers, were nice enough, innocuous folks, quiet, and polite? Is it frightening to think of how many of us fit that description? Are we the monsters?