SODOM:

SODOM.

It is interesting that in the Bible God destroyed two entire cities entirely for what He deemed to be their Sin. It is this personification of God as some sort of arbitrary tyrant that has led people away from Him in Modernity. Yet the question remains: if He is an arbitrary Tyrant, by comparison to WHAT is He arbitrary? Can one be so bold as to say that it was not REALLY sin, but simply something that HE did not like? And if that were the case, who determined its nature as not-sin? God would theoretically be the final judge: a personification of the Moral Truth.

In the absence of God it was said that man is condemned to be free. Sartre wrote a novel entitled “Nausea” that deals with the subsequent feeling of Godlessness; he all so wrote the play “No Exit”, which is set in a fictional hell (to his mind, all hells are fictional). On average, Sartre’s protagonists find their life to be hellish and nauseating.

In writing this I feel as though I am stating the transparently obvious, but I would be fooling myself to believe without warrant that the average American would nod upon hearing me namedrop Jean-Paul Sartre. Philosophy was all ways weak in the standardized American curriculum, and this explains our despair, our Fascist tendencies, and our generally embarrassing educational ratings by International Standards. When confronted with philosophy, we project our own pseudo-intellectualism upon it. And since it is so debased and under-glorified it remains outdated, obscure, and offensive.

Still: the philosophical instinct endures, and the problems loom as vividly now as ever before. So some pedantry is in order.

Our discussion begins with the question(ing) of Sin. Modernity began by asking where Sin came from. It drew on existing theological questions, such as the Problem of Evil: if God is all-great and all-good, wherefore did He create Sin? Was it created by the Devil? Was it created by Man?

The answer given by modernity and atheism was that Man created Sin because Man created God. Yet what created Man then? Scientific reductionism led us some way in explaining a causal Universe that produces him. Yet what created this Universe? What triggered the Big Bang? And why did it happen the way it did?

This advantage was lost by atheism, which Nietzsche had going for his philosophy: The Will. If man is simply a product of causal forces, what is the uncaused cause? And how does one explain the overwhelming SENSE of being a free, willing, self-responsible agent of action? If no such WILL shaped the cosmos, why ARE there any cosmos at all? And if this Universe is an illusion, what is REAL, then? (and how can we know it?)

The final deduction is that we cannot know any thing. Yet what follows is that we cannot even know THAT we know nothing. So we return to the start. Philosophy seems like an absurd misadventure, devoid of practical value. But what we took for granted was that there WAS PRACTICAL VALUE. This seems to suggest that even in QUESTIONING our very WILLS we were trying to PUT THEM TO USE for our OWN WILLFUL PURPOSES! So even the school known as Quietism (the notion that all philosophical problems are illusory and one should stop puzzling over them, by any means necessary) falls apart. We are condemned to be free, and we are condemned to think. To be philosophical is an intrinsic human instinct and, like most instincts, it is a gift that varies in its expression between individual organisms. The philosopher is a minority in this culture, though he speaks for more than the majority. It is the minority that tries to answer for All Humanity. And its role is deplored for its semblance to the Old God.

This much is definitely true: the Human Being desires for Philosophy to be Practical. Hence laws are derived from Moral Ideas which are supposed to be Universal in their value. The Quest for Self-Improvement takes the place of the Quest for God, yet the tendency to STRIVE TOWARDS A GOAL remains the same, as always. It is human nature, the Will to Power.

So what of sin?

The Modernists reasoned that God did not create sin, but that rather MAN created sin in an attempt to gain power. So sin was discarded as an amateur attempt at civilization. When God died all things were permitted, and since Satan did not exist he became an easygoing fashion statement. What was easy became law, since the right to JUDGE of one’s neighbours dissolved in emotivism no longer ostensibly governed by God. Man was enthroned in God’s place, because with no one to tell him otherwise it became easy to flatter one’s self. The agreement that was reached by Modernity was that Right and Wrong were either relative or so totally, ubiquitously OBVIOUS that any one individual needed only to rely upon his own common sense and intuition in order to find peace and prosperity. No one could tell the individual otherwise, because such an authority Did Not Exist.

Of course, they were wrong.

As a matter of fact, the human mind is predisposed towards all manner of variation that MOST people regard as “perversion” and sickness. A great deal of these perversions were formally regarded as “sin” in an earlier age. What had changed was the mindset. The pervert of the olden days knew himself to be a sinner on the road to hell. Ironically, the MODERN deviant thought nothing of the kind. Every thing for him followed LOGICALLY and SENSIBLY from his own common sense and intuition. And in the absence of a GOD, no one could tell him otherwise, as though to INFUSE him with conscience or the Will to self-improve. It was more or less PRESUMED that these things were either Christian conspiracies or otherwise Natural and Universal Human Virtues.

The actions of the pervert were not the only consequence of amorality and nihilism. An other evil was the DEMORALIZING tendency. It’s one thing to bewail one’s fate when one is shocked to find a world that did not live up to one’s God conception. It is an OTHER thing to HAVE no God conception, because then one finds one’s self torn against one’s own nature. It is in one’s Nature to resist evil, but how can one resist that which does not exist??

The pervert becomes the epitome of Individuality. No individual can be trusted in a Godless world because ANY individual might turn out to be a pervert. So as Sartre put it: Hell is Other People. All things are permitted, but none are allowed. And what is used to take the place of God, for the preservation of that very EGO that was enthroned in Godlessness under the Crown of Man? The answer is the State. It is the LAW, an impersonal device rather than a Superpersonal entity, that begins to govern Culture. And since we KNOW the Law to be an impersonal device, and since we have AGREED that it is artificial and thereby prone to the failings of human nature, we pretend that it is at once more TRANSPARENT than God and all so more RELIABLE.

Yet neither is the case. Franz Kafka’s works, for instance, alongside any well-written legal drama, attest to the Absurdity and Nebulousness of the Law in its bureaucratic functioning. And it is even less RELIABLE than it is TRANSPARENT!!

Lawrence Kohlberg concluded that most people in contemporary society do not develop past the Conventional Level of Morality, of which the Higher Rung is the Social Institution. Kohlberg’s studies were condemned across the board by special interest groups who insisted that he was a “masculinist”, etc. Yet all that these unwarranted claims accomplished was that they demonstrated the degree to which INDIVIDUALS are resistant to any sort of moral imperative to self-improve. Their special interest groups INVENT terms like “masculinist” not only to solve a PRACTICAL PROBLEM but ALL SO to protect the EGO from criticism.

A society that is governed by the Ego but that fears the Individual is a danger to its self by its own nature. Not only does dogma take the place of research. Self-preservation takes the place of camaraderie. The mentality is that I can only trust you as much as I trust myself, and I KNOW DAMN WELL that I cannot trust my self.

In the Olden Days, the Individual could be trusted insofar as he was in accord with God. Admittedly, such a relationship is so PERSONAL that one’s neighbours cannot judge of one’s own relationship, except when it is OBVIOUS that one has turned from God, and such Obviousness is made available to us by God Himself. Yet this is why Faith Worked: if I know that *I* am good in God’s eyes, then I can trust myself. If I can trust myself, then I can trust my neighbor.

It is fashionable to pardon the laws of the present by laughing at the laws of the past. What is forgotten is that the laws of the past were not so BINDING as are the laws of the present. Foucault points out in his book Discipline and Punish that Modernity created even MORE devious contraptions with which to punish the pervert. Physical torture is not so severe as neglect, public outcry, and a conditioned guilt that is devoid of even God’s mercy. But above all is the severity of HATRED. Even the guards in prison turn the other cheek when the rapist is raped, though what is all so raped is the Categorical Imperative, of which vengeance is no provision or excuse: to treat others as one wants to be treated. Punishment and vengeance take the place of moral striving to set a higher example. We do not carry out punishments to vanquish evil; we carry them out to LEVEL with it, so that we may for some brief moment become-the-pervert and yet be spared the fate of being-a-scapegoat. So the only aspect of punishment that is retained from the MIDDLE AGES is FEAR. And that is only as powerful as one’s convictions that one will not get caught. SOMEHOW, in the absence of an All-Seeing-Eye, getting caught seems less likely. So the State must take the place of God’s Omniscience. And it does this by creating a “Snitch State”, a panopticon wherein people spy on one an other and carry out vigilante justice against the perpetual scapegoat for their own sins, which they do little to transcend if they just so HAPPEN to have the same sins as most people. (Of course, most people in fact have many private sins which they dare not show to the public. Even their spouses cannot know; what if one is met with divorce and lawsuit just for an eccentric turn of phrase?)

The Law was less severe in the Olden Days because it was SECONDARY to God. And so its execution was more humane, since it was based on the presupposition that man, despite his fallen nature, still was a beloved Child of God, and he should be treated not only with hatred but with respect. In THIS day and age, we only see such an attitude in the rare film drama wherein we both hate and respect the Villain, as does the Hero. And these are usually written by Christians and Buddhists of some sort.

So how do we save ourselves from Sin? Will God laugh as we blow ourselves up?

Our salvation rests in SYMPATHY.

In our culture, one suffers alone to the degree that one suffers with everyone. It is an Absurdity that would drive any one mad (if I may be so bold). Yet what a revelation it IS to discover that it is neither CRUELTY nor ARROGANCE that perpetuates one’s alienation from the Human Community, but PAIN! One is alienated because ALL are alienated; there IS barely any Human Community save for the Law!! Humans die as the law grows virally. It is not alive, yet it spreads and grows less and less human and humane as its complexity defies both Affect and, over time, Reason.

Yet the Community can be saved by recognizing that this pain is one’s own pain. While Blame and Sin vary from person to person, Pain does not. It is the very Ubiquity of Pain that produces the Specificity of Sin. Pain is what the victim has in common with the oppressor, and it is what any pair of human aggressors is working together to prevent, heal, and even avenge (by its perpetuation, hence the ludicrousness of that peculiarly human passion).

By recognizing that we suffer TOGETHER, one is given license again to HEAL, even by radical means. One’s critics have simply given up the fight, and by so doing they aggravate their OWN pain. Fear is a dangerous emotion. But transcendence gives one the grace of God. It gives one an opportunity for Courage and Wisdom that was lost with the Death of Him. And it restores the value of the Hero, who by working to save others saves himself by the only means that one CAN save one’s self: Incidentally, as the result of trying to save others. And as one becomes-aware of this as the human predicament one gains conscious mastery of it, so that one can even save others as a MEANS towards the END of saving one’s self, becoming both practical and inspired without needing to yield to the Public telling one that one is a fake who only wants one’s own salvation. One is not “forcing” any thing with an “ulterior” agenda; one simply has made practical what was inspired, gaining deliberate mastery over something initially and ultimately SPONTANEOUS: Good Will.

Dm.A.A.