A Legitimate Rage:

We have heard the mad rantings of the hedonists who would reduce us to chemical machines whose sole autonomy is a function of deterministic chemical reactions, whose dignity is a function of function itself, for only when we see ourselves as though we were machines can we begin to think of our own preferences as though they were mere matters of fact rather than ethic.

Now consider this: what happens when the man falls in love? The woman wants neither to sleep with him, to marry him, nor to raise a child, even to live is lost to her, and yet who is she to refuse him? After all: he suffers for her love with meaning, whereas to numb his heart would be inconceivable and suicidal; no person would be so depraved as to allow for it. She must accommodate him, for though she might find no meaning in love or life, and though ideally she would reciprocate his feelings of meaning, nonetheless it is SHE that falls short of that ideal, for his meaning remains a source of unassailable authority even if she fails to recognize it as such. Without this source of meaning life itself would stop, and so it does, for to surrender the meaningful suffering in favour of a mindless pastime would be devious sacrilege and suicide, and no human being is capable of living such a mockery of life. The most inalienable right and responsibility is to suffer with dignity, and if suffering that is meaningful is nonetheless unwarranted, for the sufferer’s character is pure of intent, and to abate the suffering by denial of it (via nihilism) is a mind-numbing and depraving torture unheard of to civil ears, the responsibility falls to the object of love to respect the wishes of love’s subject, for he alone bears that torch that serves as the salvation of humanity, and he alone must be healed of the suffering that’s brought upon by her negligence of natural duty.

Alanna died because she was murdered. She was murdered by Anthony, who ascribed to her, without any semblance of a warrant, misogynistic accusations that one would not have imagined possible of a strumpet. She was murdered by Andrew Freedman, that infanticidal lunatic whose faith in her purity shifted with the tides of public opinion. And she was murdered by Kresten, whose rape of her sacred chasm was her motivation to lose faith in life itself.

It could only have been these cumulative crimes that would part so beautiful a child from Earth. Why else would she have treated me with suspicion, if not for fear of the rape repeating? How could she have brought herself to use me towards her ends had I not held those ends in common with her, and why would she have concealed her project from me had it not been for fear of what I would do should I know the extent of what was done to my Beloved?

My only solace lies in the conviction that her assailant is in fact dead. I may never be truly happy again within this lifetime, but at least I know that there remains an other. I am no sinner. I have not used people for my own bodily satisfaction. At every corner I have avoided sexual perversion, maintaining my chastity by the Grace of God, and whatever madman misrepresents my own needs as though they were acts of utility would be exposed to be mad in the same breath, for he would in that breath try to turn chastity into pretension, though by admitting to my chastity he would confess that I’ve foregone the temptations of the flesh with a surpassing consistency that even now endears me to any maiden I might choose as her first choice of mate.

Herein lies the paradox: that though no baser instinct lies except in that same act of sex, nonetheless sex remains the greatest and most coveted reward. I will not flinch in saying that all my advances have been Godsent, and those women who, having discovered them to have been my intention, but who’d thought less of them than the utmost honour, are condemned to meet the Devil. It is not out of service to some depraved self-interest that I treat as sacred that will that I condemn in others, for I have the entire tradition of objectivity upon my side; through many sins against me, I’ve remained a blameless virgin, pure and powerful. I’ve not been corrupted by foul temptations, for my approach was too noble to allow for it. NO knave that has sought that unthinkable ideal of self-interest can think to compare itself to me. Herein lies the unriddling of that same paradox: that whereas sex is prone to utility and error, all rational beings temper their appetites for it against the weight of their hearts, building an impenetrable wall against all sexual expression that can only be broken by one saving grace: Love. TO offer one’s body to an other is to commit one’s self to that Being in one’s entirety, for should one by so doing bar the path for a lover of surpassing skill and will, one should have to live forever under the shadow of that slighted sufferer, and it is no surprise to me that Kresten would have killed itself before allowing itself an other moment to be in my debt.

So Alanna’s project is complete, and I find peace. Perhaps someday I shall love again, and this same peace and sanctity of mind I shall bring to that bond.

R.G.