My son often stops by on the weekend with a new cluster of bottles meant to concoct an alcoholic drink he found on the internet. Unlike me in my youth, he will have one or two and that’s it, like a touch of desert after supper. This last weekend the bottles included Southern Comfort and Amaretto, the latter a liquor with the delicious aroma of almonds. He made his drink, didn’t like it, and poured it down the drain. I for one had to wax eloquent on my experience with Southern Comfort, a whiskey and dense sugar blend that will make just about anyone sick when taken in excess. As said, when I was young, I often took to excess, and at one time took Southern Comfort to excess. I was a seventeen -year –old foreign to drinking, and after that night have never had Southern Comfort again. Of course, after telling my grand story, I – now a seasoned citizen in the land of drinking – had to have a taste. I poured a small amount over ice and added some Amaretto. I liked it. I poured three more full amounts before the night was done and woke up at 4 AM with a stomach ache. There is no fool like an old fool.
But because it was Saturday night and there was drinking, we stayed up late talking about Big Picture stuff. He is concerned with the cultural drift in our society, as he should be, but I had to add some ameliorative council. For one, it was worse in the late 1960’s and we still survived. For two, all of this fretting and stomping is small-potato stuff compared to what really is. As only someone swilling drink can do, I casually offered up my concept of what ‘really is’ really is. What I offered up was true, drink or no, but it was only an introduction. Unless we float above the land on sacred wings, that is all we can offer as long as we remain tied to our human cloaks of skin.
As I have stated all too often, and as it was written in my book Dream Weaver, in my youth I tended towards excess in more than alcohol. In my group, the hallucinogens of the era were all the rage, and they offered up a whole lot more than someone looking for a party would ever bargain for. One of those things granted – regardless of desire - was a deeper look at human society, both at home and abroad. With this, a few of my friends and I were shocked to find that much of what we considered to be normal was just a whitewash, a film over what lay underneath. Underneath was infinite mystery, vast avenues of foundational meaning, and a universal pulse of binding love. It was marvelous and wonderful but so hard to take, even for a teen-age punk, that I for one kissed the earth afterward, so glad to be back to a ‘normal’ that now seemed so friendly and polite.
Not all were pleased to come back to the safe and secure landing pad. Many of us from that era, including myself, pushed such chemical “aids” aside and began our trek into religion and spirituality while still dressed in our mortal skins. But others took these visions as the whole rather than as an introduction and used them to combat a society that they had already blamed for their unhappiness. They saw how superficial our American Way was, not realizing that ALL societies are often superficial in the face of Big Reality. They sought to find truth and comfort by creating a social structure based on what they had learned. To do this, though, they had to first destroy the existing social reality. Exposed as it had been by the introduction to truth, it seemed an easy and good thing to do.
As far as destroying society is concerned, they were right; it IS far easier to do than one might first realize. To get an idea, take a look at the early sections of the Old Testament. Many of the rules given for human behavior are simply put forth without explanation, exactly as a parent would to a young child. If the rules are not tied together for us in a cogent and understandable way, they do seem primitive and arbitrary. Circumcision? A prohibition of flesh from animals with cloven hooves? Anthropologists have tried to explain many of these rules though all sorts of reductionist theories and none of them have really worked. When looked at with common everyday rationality, the rules do seem stupid. So why not just throw them away and live a less restricted life?
We have this going on in the much of the world today. Many of the rules don’t seem to make sense, but rather impede what one wants to do. Just as with my visions, many now can clearly see that a host of social norms are superficial and seem to have little or nothing to do with the Big Picture. Why permit this and not that? Why not just make up a set of rules that makes sense and be done with the rest?
I do not know about believing Jews, but for Christians, it is the New Testament that makes sense of the Old, only visible in hindsight. While such laws as circumcision and dietary prohibitions were dropped – seen only as ways of setting the Jews apart for the sake of keeping them together to complete the story – the entirety of the nearly 2,000- year history from Abram (Abraham) to Jesus was made to prepare the way for Christ. One does not have to be a believer to see that all the passion and fury of the Old Testament makes sense from that perspective. It shows that, rather than being arbitrary or a way to subject women or slaves or whatever to the powers that be, many of the rules had a much higher goal in mind. A much higher goal, that is, that could not be known by the common man until the culminating reason had come to pass. Much like Mom and Dad keeping us from the liquor cabinet, we can’t always understand the rules until we are brought to a certain age of maturity, either personally or culturally.
Which doesn’t disabuse the overall view that societal rules taken in part are often superficial. Instead, we have to understand what the rules in aggregate mean in our current state of existence. On the one hand, the reason for many of them, such as waiting until marriage for sex, have become abundantly clear in the wake of the sexual revolution. The destruction of the family and the attendant confusion and unhappiness of children in fatherless households has affected so many other behaviors negatively that they are hard to count. On the other hand, we might say “so what?” If society is only a distractive gloss far removed from the infinite potential of our lives, why bother even keeping it?
It is here where the rubber meets the road with those only too willing to throw out all the old to make their own preferred version of society. We have to first admit, as Madonna once sang, that we are material girls (and boys) and we live in a material – that is, limited – world. We can open the doors of perception briefly, with drugs or fasting or prayer or whatever, but we always will come back to our limited reality. This has been true through all known times and cultures. We are made for what we have right now. Because of this – that is, because our mortal realty is superficial regardless - we need superficial rules. However, for two, these rules should not be arbitrary. They should make sense in the aggregate from the perspective of the Big Picture, as the Old Testament did to the New.
The question is, how can this be done? Or, more accurately, how has this usually been done in the past?
No one who studies culture in general can agree upon how the aggregate rules were made. With the aid of myth and religion, I think it is safe to stipulate that culture was formed from both the material world – that is, the practical and the political – and the spiritual. The practical is subject to change, while that emanating from the spiritual is not, at least until its objective is achieved. The Ten Commandments broadly defined our own once-immutable laws, aided by New Testament touches, including the discouragement of divorce and the broadening of the concept of “neighbor.” Practical laws might include how we react to plague, or the proper length for female dresses. The first set of rules comes from a divine or revelatory source, while the second from the superficial world of mortals. The first forms a coherent pattern with a greater end in mind, while the second regulates on a more particular basis, subject to change with different circumstances.
This brings us to the crux of our problem today: when we deny the sacred, we lump all the rules together, both revelatory and practical. Certain elements of change in our society even tie the spiritual to the practical in ALL ways, that is, as designed solely for practical or political ends.
Obviously, such a site as this disagrees. But instead of simply condemning this conflation of cultural directives, I would like to ask the question: if the social rules are all fundamentally superficial and/or political, then how are the new ones made by the materialists any different?
Here’s the point: as material beings we dwell in the superficial and as such need superficial rules. However, we are not and cannot be separated totally from the infinite, that is, the sacred. This comes through to our rational/practical way of thinking through revelation, which “reveals” to us the integration of certain rules and their connection to the sacred. This connection is lost in the practical world, but through faith in the character of the prophets, or through miraculous demonstrations, we are brought to hold these certain elements as important and integral to our overall wellbeing.
The irony is, that those who were brought to social revolution by revelation might now refuse to accept the revelatory truth of the past. Worse, many now design new rules only from the practical level – that is, from the rational/theoretical or simply from the personal – thus creating the very superficiality they despise. And as these are superficial and without deep integrity, they are mutable. Dependence on them, then, is certain to create chaos. Chaos is the opposite of order, as the sacred is defined by ultimate unity. One runs against the other; one leads to unsatisfactory superficiality and ultimate dissolution, the other to infinite depth and eternal meaning.
In our current era, this is the choice we must all make. The superficial makes no claim on the supernatural and so is easier to embrace, but it only leads us, at best, back to our banal selves. The spiritual demands we suspend a portion of our practical mind (but unlike a cult, only a portion), but gives in return at least social order, and at best the possibility of infinite fulfillment. Which way, in the end, requires the greater courage and offers the greater reward?
My son often stops by on the weekend with a new cluster of bottles meant to concoct an alcoholic drink he found on the internet. Unlike me in my youth, he will have one or two and that’s it, like a touch of desert after supper. This last weekend the bottles included Southern Comfort and Amaretto, the latter a liquor with the delicious aroma of almonds. He made his drink, didn’t like it, and poured it down the drain. I for one had to wax eloquent on my experience with Southern Comfort, a whiskey and dense sugar blend that will make just about anyone sick when taken in excess. As said, when I was young, I often took to excess, and at one time took Southern Comfort to excess. I was a seventeen -year –old foreign to drinking, and after that night have never had Southern Comfort again. Of course, after telling my grand story, I – now a seasoned citizen in the land of drinking – had to have a taste. I poured a small amount over ice and added some Amaretto. I liked it. I poured three more full amounts before the night was done and woke up at 4 AM with a stomach ache. There is no fool like an old fool.
But because it was Saturday night and there was drinking, we stayed up late talking about Big Picture stuff. He is concerned with the cultural drift in our society, as he should be, but I had to add some ameliorative council. For one, it was worse in the late 1960’s and we still survived. For two, all of this fretting and stomping is small-potato stuff compared to what really is. As only someone swilling drink can do, I casually offered up my concept of what ‘really is’ really is. What I offered up was true, drink or no, but it was only an introduction. Unless we float above the land on sacred wings, that is all we can offer as long as we remain tied to our human cloaks of skin.
As I have stated all too often, and as it was written in my book Dream Weaver, in my youth I tended towards excess in more than alcohol. In my group, the hallucinogens of the era were all the rage, and they offered up a whole lot more than someone looking for a party would ever bargain for. One of those things granted – regardless of desire - was a deeper look at human society, both at home and abroad. With this, a few of my friends and I were shocked to find that much of what we considered to be normal was just a whitewash, a film over what lay underneath. Underneath was infinite mystery, vast avenues of foundational meaning, and a universal pulse of binding love. It was marvelous and wonderful but so hard to take, even for a teen-age punk, that I for one kissed the earth afterward, so glad to be back to a ‘normal’ that now seemed so friendly and polite.
Not all were pleased to come back to the safe and secure landing pad. Many of us from that era, including myself, pushed such chemical “aids” aside and began our trek into religion and spirituality while still dressed in our mortal skins. But others took these visions as the whole rather than as an introduction and used them to combat a society that they had already blamed for their unhappiness. They saw how superficial our American Way was, not realizing that ALL societies are often superficial in the face of Big Reality. They sought to find truth and comfort by creating a social structure based on what they had learned. To do this, though, they had to first destroy the existing social reality. Exposed as it had been by the introduction to truth, it seemed an easy and good thing to do.
As far as destroying society is concerned, they were right; it IS far easier to do than one might first realize. To get an idea, take a look at the early sections of the Old Testament. Many of the rules given for human behavior are simply put forth without explanation, exactly as a parent would to a young child. If the rules are not tied together for us in a cogent and understandable way, they do seem primitive and arbitrary. Circumcision? A prohibition of flesh from animals with cloven hooves? Anthropologists have tried to explain many of these rules though all sorts of reductionist theories and none of them have really worked. When looked at with common everyday rationality, the rules do seem stupid. So why not just throw them away and live a less restricted life?
We have this going on in the much of the world today. Many of the rules don’t seem to make sense, but rather impede what one wants to do. Just as with my visions, many now can clearly see that a host of social norms are superficial and seem to have little or nothing to do with the Big Picture. Why permit this and not that? Why not just make up a set of rules that makes sense and be done with the rest?
I do not know about believing Jews, but for Christians, it is the New Testament that makes sense of the Old, only visible in hindsight. While such laws as circumcision and dietary prohibitions were dropped – seen only as ways of setting the Jews apart for the sake of keeping them together to complete the story – the entirety of the nearly 2,000- year history from Abram (Abraham) to Jesus was made to prepare the way for Christ. One does not have to be a believer to see that all the passion and fury of the Old Testament makes sense from that perspective. It shows that, rather than being arbitrary or a way to subject women or slaves or whatever to the powers that be, many of the rules had a much higher goal in mind. A much higher goal, that is, that could not be known by the common man until the culminating reason had come to pass. Much like Mom and Dad keeping us from the liquor cabinet, we can’t always understand the rules until we are brought to a certain age of maturity, either personally or culturally.
Which doesn’t disabuse the overall view that societal rules taken in part are often superficial. Instead, we have to understand what the rules in aggregate mean in our current state of existence. On the one hand, the reason for many of them, such as waiting until marriage for sex, have become abundantly clear in the wake of the sexual revolution. The destruction of the family and the attendant confusion and unhappiness of children in fatherless households has affected so many other behaviors negatively that they are hard to count. On the other hand, we might say “so what?” If society is only a distractive gloss far removed from the infinite potential of our lives, why bother even keeping it?
It is here where the rubber meets the road with those only too willing to throw out all the old to make their own preferred version of society. We have to first admit, as Madonna once sang, that we are material girls (and boys) and we live in a material – that is, limited – world. We can open the doors of perception briefly, with drugs or fasting or prayer or whatever, but we always will come back to our limited reality. This has been true through all known times and cultures. We are made for what we have right now. Because of this – that is, because our mortal realty is superficial regardless - we need superficial rules. However, for two, these rules should not be arbitrary. They should make sense in the aggregate from the perspective of the Big Picture, as the Old Testament did to the New.
The question is, how can this be done? Or, more accurately, how has this usually been done in the past?
No one who studies culture in general can agree upon how the aggregate rules were made. With the aid of myth and religion, I think it is safe to stipulate that culture was formed from both the material world – that is, the practical and the political – and the spiritual. The practical is subject to change, while that emanating from the spiritual is not, at least until its objective is achieved. The Ten Commandments broadly defined our own once-immutable laws, aided by New Testament touches, including the discouragement of divorce and the broadening of the concept of “neighbor.” Practical laws might include how we react to plague, or the proper length for female dresses. The first set of rules comes from a divine or revelatory source, while the second from the superficial world of mortals. The first forms a coherent pattern with a greater end in mind, while the second regulates on a more particular basis, subject to change with different circumstances.
This brings us to the crux of our problem today: when we deny the sacred, we lump all the rules together, both revelatory and practical. Certain elements of change in our society even tie the spiritual to the practical in ALL ways, that is, as designed solely for practical or political ends.
Obviously, such a site as this disagrees. But instead of simply condemning this conflation of cultural directives, I would like to ask the question: if the social rules are all fundamentally superficial and/or political, then how are the new ones made by the materialists any different?
Here’s the point: as material beings we dwell in the superficial and as such need superficial rules. However, we are not and cannot be separated totally from the infinite, that is, the sacred. This comes through to our rational/practical way of thinking through revelation, which “reveals” to us the integration of certain rules and their connection to the sacred. This connection is lost in the practical world, but through faith in the character of the prophets, or through miraculous demonstrations, we are brought to hold these certain elements as important and integral to our overall wellbeing.
The irony is, that those who were brought to social revolution by revelation might now refuse to accept the revelatory truth of the past. Worse, many now design new rules only from the practical level – that is, from the rational/theoretical or simply from the personal – thus creating the very superficiality they despise. And as these are superficial and without deep integrity, they are mutable. Dependence on them, then, is certain to create chaos. Chaos is the opposite of order, as the sacred is defined by ultimate unity. One runs against the other; one leads to unsatisfactory superficiality and ultimate dissolution, the other to infinite depth and eternal meaning.
In our current era, this is the choice we must all make. The superficial makes no claim on the supernatural and so is easier to embrace, but it only leads us, at best, back to our banal selves. The spiritual demands we suspend a portion of our practical mind (but unlike a cult, only a portion), but gives in return at least social order, and at best the possibility of infinite fulfillment. Which way, in the end, requires the greater courage and offers the greater reward?
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