P
One comment I'd make - not in opposition to what you have written - is that money and happiness really do not equate. The movies you watch may not represent that well. For example, would you actually want the degree of luxury you describe? Would you want a household that needed to be run almost like a business, or a car that was so smart you daren't park it in most locations?
The extremely poor in third world countries are something else - it is much harder to believe they are happy. The strange thing is that even back when I was a kid, people were sending money to try to solve this problem - and nothing has actually changed.
I agree that evil isn't just about child molestation - important though that is.
David
The extremely poor in third world countries are something else - it is much harder to believe they are happy. The strange thing is that even back when I was a kid, people were sending money to try to solve this problem - and nothing has actually changed.
I agree that evil isn't just about child molestation - important though that is.
David
I've oftentimes encountered Christians and other spiritual types who respond to such considerations with St. Paul's exhortation:
For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.
It's like the following Fourth Way parable by Gurdjieff:
“There is an Eastern tale which speaks about a very rich magician who had a great many sheep. But at the same time this magician was very mean. He did not want to hire shepherds, nor did he want to erect a fence about the pasture where his sheep were grazing. The sheep consequently often wandered into the forest, fell into ravines, and so on, and above all they ran away, for they knew that the magician wanted their flesh and skins and this they did not like.
“At last the magician found a remedy. He hypnotized his sheep and suggested to them first of all that they were immortal and that no harm was being done to them when they were skinned, that, on the contrary, it would be very good for them and even pleasant; secondly he suggested that the magician was a good master who loved his flock so much that he was ready to do anything in the world for them; and in the third place he suggested to them that if anything at all were going to happen to them it was not going to happen just then, at any rate not that day, and therefore they had no need to think about it. Further the magician suggested to his sheep that they were not sheep at all; to some of them he suggested that they were lions, to others that they were eagles, to others that they were men, and to others that they were magicians.
“And after all this his cares and worries about the sheep came to an end. They never ran away again but quietly awaited the time when the magician would require their flesh and skins.
“This tale is a very good illustration of man’s position."
“At last the magician found a remedy. He hypnotized his sheep and suggested to them first of all that they were immortal and that no harm was being done to them when they were skinned, that, on the contrary, it would be very good for them and even pleasant; secondly he suggested that the magician was a good master who loved his flock so much that he was ready to do anything in the world for them; and in the third place he suggested to them that if anything at all were going to happen to them it was not going to happen just then, at any rate not that day, and therefore they had no need to think about it. Further the magician suggested to his sheep that they were not sheep at all; to some of them he suggested that they were lions, to others that they were eagles, to others that they were men, and to others that they were magicians.
“And after all this his cares and worries about the sheep came to an end. They never ran away again but quietly awaited the time when the magician would require their flesh and skins.
“This tale is a very good illustration of man’s position."
If the spiritual realm is a hierarchy and the earthly realm lies somewhere downstream of it, then I would be inclined to think we are quite a ways downstream in light of the above and in light of any other form of evil that goes on here. Perhaps what we're missing is just how pervasive a role evil plays in our daily experience and how it is not at all exceptional or extraordinary. What is exceptional or extraordinary is that anything good at all happens here. In fact, I'd argue that we are all so benighted and coarsened by the evil we're constantly exposed to that our concept of what is good is probably nearly wholly false.
Getting back to Hecate's Scottish Calvinist roots, I'd say our compass is nearly incapable of pointing True North (that is to say, depraved).