I read this article today: July 16, 1945: Trinity Blast Opens Atomic Age.
I’m also involved in a discussion at Sound and Silence entitled A Chenobryl Meditation.
Both mentioned the following quote from the Bhagavad Gita:
Now, I am become death, the destroyer of worlds, who has come to annihilate everyone.
This got me thinking about, well, a lot of things. One of them being the power we have as human beings.
The religions that have a more dualistic perspective tend to see humans as being largely powerless, and put the power in the hand of two opposing forces of good and evil, that are seen as being seperate entites to humans. So God has the power of good, and the Devil has the power of evil.
But these events make us realise that these powers are in fact in us, not so much as good and evil, but it’s just the way it is. In the basic building block of matter, the atom, lies the power to destroy. And in our hands, as human beings, lies the very same power – to destroy the Earth out of which we’ve come. It is easy to see this as one side of a dualism, but to forget that we must potentially have the same power for the opposite – “good”, whatever that may be.
Nature isn’t so dualistic. It took the destruction of stars to generate the materials with which life is built. The very act of eating, which gives us life, requires the destruction of life. But it is out of our own fear of death and destruction that we build these weapons, forgetting who we really are. That while we have the power of death, the Destroyer of worlds, that same power in us is the power of Creator. Perhaps we forget who we are because we fear the responsibility of our own power..
“As long as there are large numbers of people who fear the responsibility of their own power, religions will continue to dominate the landscape of human development.”
(found here)
July 18, 2008 at 6:33 am |
Welcome to WordPress: ooh it feels good to simply hit respond and hey ho – automagic!
A fine summary of the problems of responsibility and the tendancy of (dualistic) religion to take responsibility away. Perhaps Moses felt this anxiety when he said “Can’t someone else do it?”.
I think we all feel it. But once you break through to acceptance of your responsibility as co-creator, you come close to sharing in “The Glory”. The clsely related inverse, as uttered by Colnel Kurtz in Apocalypse Now, is “The Horror.”
July 18, 2008 at 7:10 am |
Thanks Nic. It’s good to be here – lot’s of little settings and things to play with. Unfortunately it wasn’t so automagic because I had the whole thing where I had to approve your comment – but that’s sorted now. And congrats with being the first to comment
I think that the myth of the tree of the knowlege of good and evil is interesting when it comes to this – moving out of the Garden – the non-duality of nature, to a realm where there is this distinction between good and evil. in this ‘realm’ we want to identify with the good, but have this dilema of experiencing both within us, because I believe they are the same power. The awesome responsibility that comes with it when we realise that we have this power – the power of gods, the power of destroyer and creator, in the very fabric of our being.
July 18, 2008 at 8:53 am |
I am trying to do justice to the various arguments around evil and good, the jury is out and may be so for a long long time.
So how does it feel to be free of Satan, because he and Yahweh are one?;)
Your view is asking christians to give up the one thing they truly cherish: Die Duivel.
July 18, 2008 at 11:20 am |
Well yes – that’s the thing. In the story of the Gerasene demoniac, the people asked Jesus to leave once the demons were in the pigs. Walter Wink suggests that this was because they no longer had their scapegoat – the person onto whom they could project their own ‘evil’.
In that sense I think people need concepts like ‘the devil’, or super-powers need an ‘axis of evil’ in which to hide their own shadow.
But that’s the whole thing about duality – it causes one to have to choose sides, which creates this psychosis, because all of it IS US.
Perhaps that is why the teaching of loving one’s enemies is so powerful – because your enemies are in you as well, they are you. It’s the same ’stuff’. Don’t judge…. because you will be judging yourself.
July 21, 2008 at 9:42 am |
On a semantic note, I find myself using “dualism” to describe a polarity that is static, institutionalised and damaging, and “duality” to describe a dynamic relationship of opposites. Life comprises of dualities which can ossify into dualisms, and I think we should distinguish between them. But thats me.
July 21, 2008 at 9:51 am |
That’s a helpful distinction..
July 23, 2008 at 1:47 pm |
Hi Nic and Gavin
As a self-respecting and not altogether unreasonable materialist (though somewhat fundamentalist) it is obvious that one species controls the vast majority of impacts on the vast majority of environments on the planets surface. So far so good, but one thing that really pisses me off is people who drive around with bumper stickers saying “Don’t worry, God is in control”. To me it says “I am entitled to all the benefits of the material world, but I am not responsible for the consequences.” If you are divorced from the material world, then leave your car and your stickers alone. Otherwise realize that we all live in the material world and have material consequences, and we should count the profit only when we have counted the cost, and are clear about whose accounts both profits and costs are due to. I never liked Hansie Cronje, even before I found out that he was a crook. But I really hated his defence that “the Devil made me do it” (the cheating, taking bribes etc.). You didn’t see him attributing all his gifts to the Devil (or to God, for that matter). Imagine “I wouldn’t have made that century without help from the Devil”. Unlikely. To most Christians the duality is between God and the Devil, but I think that that duality is wrongly framed. The real poles are the material world vs. the spiritual or ethical world, and people who perceive a material benefit at an ethical cost will almost always take the deal. Faust lives , whilst the earth dies!
July 23, 2008 at 6:12 pm |
Anthony – it’s interesting that the devil is often linked to materialism, like in the Tarot for example. Also there is the link between Pan – to do with nature, and the Christian myth of the Devil.
July 24, 2008 at 2:43 pm |
“The devil made me do” refelcts a childish pseudo spirituality. Maturity has to do with accepting ones role as co-creator, and most people arent up to that sort of responsibility.
“Righteousness” is a term I once despised as representing religiosity and dualism but I’ve warmed to it again. It has very wholistic implications, and is not far from what Chief Seattle saw when he said, “What is man without the beasts? If all the beasts were gone, many would die from a great loneliness of spirit. For whatever happens to the beasts soon happens to man. All things are connected.”