Descent into the pit

Derangement in our time

From Wikipedia: Divine Comedy Illustrated by Botticelli

I don’t like to make timely posts. In fact, I’m rather repelled by the practice of chasing the latest trend. I prefer to take my time and think fully through about something on my mind, whether it’s relevant or not to what’s going on in the world at large. The process of writing focuses the mind and forces a confrontation with your own thoughts as they appear before you, from ethereal to incarnation as it were. It’s not a process which can be expedited, so I like to take my time. But, as British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan once said, “events dear boy, events”.

Charlie Kirk’s murder is indeed an event, one which has careened my mind into thought. What consumes me is that this is both a manifestation and a reflection of the evil thoughts of many in the depths of the political theater we call public discourse.

As I write this, I have no idea who ended up pulling the trigger. Frankly, I find it irrelevant who the man is, he is unimportant in this. What he actually is, as far as I’m concerned, is an incarnation of an idea, a spirit, some would even say an egregore (an intelligence spawned from a collective group), we wrestle not with mere flesh and blood.

There is a hatred that grows in the heart when a man focuses so solely on the political as the ne plus ultra (nothing beyond this) of his existence. He reads day after day how the world isn’t working the way it ought, as he sees it. Awful decisions are made despite the ample evidence to the contrary! How could this be so! The answer to him appears simple enough, that everyone opposed to him is evil, stupid, and ignorant in some combination which he decides makes the most sense contingent on the situation. Of course, conversely, everyone camped with him is at least a comrade, even if he disagrees here and there, or even in large. As long as he is pointed at the man’s foe that’s enough to excuse and cover for inconvenient sins.

The man’s heart overtime becomes more and more twisted to match the disordered paths his will is forcing it down. Where at the beginning he might have condemned many a thought and action he now has and does without a second’s compunction, he now has nothing but contempt for the weakness he displayed at the beginning of his own “political awakening” as he may describe it. Fools they are, he thinks with cynicism and pride. He’s abetted and fanned on by others on the same or farther into their own descent. Those further on continue to call to him to come further into the pit they themselves are delving, and he obeys out of a desire to reach their purity, in a dark simulacrum of how the Saints of the Church Triumphant encourage holiness of the Church Militant. Evil ever tries to reflect the good but always warps it, like how Tolkien’s Orc is a corrupted and disfigured Elf, the beauty and glory are removed, but the basic form remains.

Ultimately, the apotheosis of this is to take action, since if the eschaton is possible on the Earth, but is being denied to the yearning of the people by them, the them is of course nonspecific and in the final analysis it doesn’t matter who the them is, merely that his vision isn’t manifesting as it ought. He reasons it must be the result of malfeasance on the part of his enemy, since nothing of his own vision is in error. Then, at the bottom of the descent into the pit, he decides it is only through that most visceral application of power, that of violence, that salvation can be brought.

We stand in the aftermath of that descent, and not for the first, nor the last time. We’ve seen this time and time again, and will see it probably sooner again than we expect. We cannot save ourselves and make Eden on Earth, and the delusion that it can be done engenders a madness in those who most believe it and yearn for justice, since that which could slake that thirst is perpetually out of reach, only visible on the horizons of their mind. Unlike when Christ rejected Lucifer’s offer of worldly dominion, they eagerly grasp at the chance to change the world, and so they lose everything, and bring only darkness where they sought to bring light.

The worlds ills can be ameliorated, but they cannot be taken away without something outside the world taking those flaws away. The man who aims to save the world, and its people he claims to love, ends up pulling the trigger or drawing the sword that takes a life.

Parting thoughts

I say all this as someone who stepped back from the pit himself. I hadn’t descended far, because I had recognized where it was that I was plunging. I’ve been on both sides of the binary of the present, or perhaps the past, of politics. There is in this no real difference between the two if one is deeply committed enough to place them on the throne of the Most High, the result is the same.

This murder has seemed to overshadow the tragedy which this day has been so associated with all my life, the attacks on the World Trade Center towers on 9/11, an event which indeed changed the world, but not for the better. But it stands in continuity with that tragedy. Men sought to change the world through the application of violence, though they confessed they did so in pursuance of God’s will. What a mockery they make of Him. They were no different from the other incarnations of evil, they just wore a different coat of paint.

I am reminded of the book Lord of the World, which I’ve written on before. A part of the persecuted Church in this dystopia lashes out in rage, in a vain attempt to force the world onto a path through the application of power. It’s a pointless and counterproductive act, bringing even more evil down in response. The ending of the tale is when all looks most dire, the forces of darkness have an overwhelming power of action against good, they close in with the strength to crush. And here, when those who seek to destroy with force are about to snuff out those who instead decided to aim higher than the world, the book ends “Then this world passed, and the glory of it. THE END”. All was brought to a close, and the Judgement would be done, but not by us.

The only way out is up. You cannot escape the pit by attempting to dig yourself deeper into it. Even Dante, though he descended through the pits of hell to its center, eventually has to climb up once more to escape it. We are called to “Then render to Caesar, the things that are of Caesar; and to God, the things that are of God.” And they wondered over him. Mark 12:17. Too often though, what should be God’s is rendered to Caesar, that due to the sacred is given to the profane.

In the last, I’d ask you to consider how high you are aiming your soul, and perhaps take the time to ponder if it’s high enough.