Thursday, April 07, 2011

Interlude for TEOTWAWKI

"The end of the world as we know it" is a myth chased by people who need something to believe in; a desire for something greater than their little selves.  There has always been a great hunger for apocalypse.  Eschatology is the most popular 'science' and religions are it's greatest beneficiaries. For instance, the 2nd coming of Christ, the eternal waiting for the Mesiah, the imminent emergence of the 12th Imman. One comes from above, the last from the bowels of the Earth, and the middle we haven't yet seen. That is the way of Christians, Jews, Muslims. In the East, he is sent forth again and again as needed, when there is a waning of love of God which is the view most correct, I think.

Principle: Self loathing is at the root of fascination with apocalyptic dreams. Essentially it is the yearning for self destruction.

This goes all the way back to the so called 'original sin' which in a way can be thought of as the first lesson in self loathing. Compare Soren Kierkegaard's "Concept of Dread". What is dread without the "r"? The search or desire for salvation is also a function of need for self annihilation. Kill the little self to realise God. This makes for a life of passion. It perverts the true meaning and purpose of existence by arresting development at the level of the sensuous, as in Don Juanism, and in reality is the mode of living of the daemonic in nature. It is antithetical to true faith and to reason. The existential daemonic mode of being is infinite desire or longing where being whole or complete resides infinitely in the next sensuous moment always and ever on the horizon as a goal but never reached. True faith is the opposite state of Being, always and ever complete. One needn't dread not being saved or dead to the Real because of the unworthiness that infinitely precipitates self loathing. Salvation is, once accepted, notice I don't say achieved, a state that should be seen as an end that when we arrive we see as the beginning, seen for the first time. We arrive at where we started and recognise it for the first time. That, of course, is T.S. Eliot. Salvation can't be achieved. It can only be accepted. We should focus on this promise of the divine: "Lo, I am with you always, even unto the ends of the world."