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What a Piece of Work Is Man

In a week that includes the worst mass shooting in American history by a lone, very disturbed gunman, once again we ask ourselves how this could have happened.

At the very same time, hundreds of people a week are being killed in Iraq as a result of a lone disturbed President, who typifies the insanity of a society that speaks of love, tolerance, compassion and peace while officially committing acts of violence and hatred towards people we once claimed to "shine the light of democracy" upon.

A first reading into the mind of Cho Seung-Hui indicates that he was likely sexually abused as a child. This all-too-secret crime against so many children throughout the world generally causes its victims to turn their rage inward destroying their lives in an atmosphere of desperate silence. When it's directed outwards...well, we've seen what can happen.

I am currently reading "Under the Banner of Heaven" by Jon Krakauer, about the history of polygamy in Mormonism. Today, polygamy is officially banned in the Church of Latter Day Saints, and was done so in the late 19th century in order for the State of Utah to co-exist peacefully with the rest of the United States.

Still, the Prophet and founder of Mormonism, Joseph Smith, is described in the book as mostly a charismatic charlatan who--like so many "cult" leaders--soon believed his own "publicity" and when he tired of one wife, it was "revealed" to him that he could and should take as many as he wished.

So when the official Church banned this sacred tenet of the faith, those who believed in the original revelations of Smith felt justified and even commanded to practice plural marriage.

Today, there are many polygamous adherents of Smith's original Church. While many of these LDS fundamentalists are undoubtedly good and honorable people, the concept of personal revelation as espoused by Smith is the perfect prerequisite for attractive, narcissistic personalities to exploit those around them.

"Under the Banner of Heaven" describes many examples of these kinds of men who have created their own little fiefdoms throughout the world. And invariably, these men have combined a total subjugation of women with an abuse of daughters that include incest and marriage to friends and relatives at ages as young as fourteen, where they would be just one of a virtually unlimited number of wives.

This abuse is as destructive to these girls as any kind of physical, sexual or emotional abuse committed outside of these "communities". But since the vast majority of polygamous Mormon wives are taught from infancy that they are little more than worthless chattel--except as a vessel for begetting Mormon children--they suffer the death of any sense of individuality or spirit. And those with a stubborn attachment to a sense of self have actually be sent to mental institutions for displaying a serious independent streak.

I don't know. After I stopped believing in evil around my second year of college--which was approximately the time I stopped believing that religion was beneficial to anyone--I slowly evolved into a scientific materialist. I was proud of my ability to see past the hypocritical religious crap that permeates our society. This was three decades ago and I've softened my determined atheism a bit.

Nothing in my life or dreams has made me believe in any reality other than this one. But I haven't stopped seeking one...just one moment of a sense of "the other".

I've studied the annals of psychedelia and Shamanism and New Age beliefs, as well as Buddhism, and the intellectual rationalist in me can't help but build rationalist arguments for all the phenomena described, else, I conclude, trying to give myself over to the possibilities of extra-realistic dimensions puts me in the same mindset as the Lafferty brothers described in the book, who became so convinced of their conversations with God that they felt both commanded and justified to slash and kill the wife of a brother of theirs, then calmly slit the throat of her baby.

With this and Cho's actions as well as the action of our President, Vice President and so many others in the world, how can I not believe in evil?

But alas, even these kinds of actions can be reasonably understood as the cumulative effects of lifetimes of mixed messages, misunderstood teachings, abuse, lack of real love and millions of other psychic events that create who we are.

So, who the hell do we blame?

No one and everyone. The same incredibly complex organ that creates breathtakingly beautiful works of art and literature; that can display the most selfless actions of bravery and heroism; that can produce such an intense love for others; can also wield death and destroy lives without a second thought and without a moment's regret.

If karmic evolution is the 1st law of metaphysics, that would offer some sense of gnosis for what we witness every single day.

In the meantime, we can only acknowledge the truth of Shakespeare's observation (as reworked for the musical "Hair"):

posted by mauiloa @ 8:15 PM