Sure, I got that. I’m going to say “Jesus,” rather than “messiah complex,” because messiah complex to me would mean warrior dreams, it was a general sent from God they were asking for when the ancient Hebrews coined the term, probably more like Netanyahu than the John Lennon type we hear about with Jesus. Hey, they got him, so this is the Jewish Millennium? Not that there’s anything wrong with that, I mean compared to other, competitive ethnic empires, American century, China rules the world, ants rule the world . . . it’s everybody’s glory days!
That was just a bit of delayed learning on my part, I get used to things in certain contexts, modern Israel I think more about in terms of American myths, the End of Days. I forgot Israel figures there’s a thousand years of glorious history coming before the End. Is this common knowledge, is it even knowledge? I must have gotten it from the Pesher Technique, it was supposed to be the Jewish myth then, in classical times and before, the messiah, the millennium, and then a reunion with God? Like the Rapture?
No, I got the hippy dippy Jesus complex. It’s not about saving a nation by arms, it’s about saving the whole world, and not by conquest but by pacifying and so saving their souls.
Someone on Twitter said they wished that our inner scars were visible, and then we would stop being so mean to one another, and I get that image, but I replied with what I think and that is that the meanness is the scar, the scar hides in plain sight. Meanness is visible, right, well, audible – detectable by your senses, let’s say? Meanness, aggression, it’s sort of a known response to poor treatment, right, a thing you would certainly expect along with the scars? It fits, it’s a scar, it’s damage and rough repair.
The thing is, this meanness, it’s not that difficult to trace its origins . . . but it’s not exactly endearing, is it?
I can see some causes, I can be understanding, I can feel for the victim of abuse – but when his symptom is being nasty, how do I approach him, how do I want to, how do I sympathize?
It’s that seed of fate, the over before you knew there was a game thing, like classical theatre, some feckless god decided that abuse should drive us rabid and when we begged the god for a weapon against it, he gave us a bludgeon. Fate, ouroboros, our central conundrum since we accepted the weapon. You can use it, and it sort of works – but it makes more.
Somebody please tell me which three myths I’m mixing up, please. (Honestly, while I’m sure that is the truth, that I’m putting myths in a blender together here, full disclosure, I believe AST, Murphy’s Law of Nature, the response and the bludgeon, to be likely as yet unrepresented in classical myth, I believe them to be . . . unrevealed. I think it’s a secret, a lie to ourselves and not the sort of thing every classical scholar knows. But I’m extrapolating from a mad insight, I could well be shown otherwise – again, please.)
So along comes me, saying, OK, the god put the response inside us, we may be stuck with that – but he’s only handed us the weapon. That’s free will when we use it. We don’t have to.
In fact it looks to me like our temptation, our test that we’re failing, us always falling for the short term, roughest solution. Ha! You know I’m talking about punishment, so this is perhaps rich – forty days in the desert of newborn sleep deprivation and all western parents take the bribe, “power over all this.”
No?
A case can be made that Jesus shared my mad, absolutist idea about simply not punishing, the Cast the First Stone story as well as the Prodigal Son tales can be looked at that way – I’m no scholar, are there more? Not punishing, it’s not a great leap from the message of forgiveness, but of course punishing didn’t end, and forgiveness is a commodity in this punishing world.
If I may add some snide insult to this injury, I will say that we remember him, and an echo of the message, and we still tell those two stories, listening like dogs with our heads on sideways trying to glean the meaning, a meditative mystery, like one hand clapping – it means don’t punish, Rover!
I know – “Ruh?”
It’s a tough concept.
But we remember he tried, right, tried . . . ruh, again? We’re not sure, but he forgave folks, that’s nice. That is my complex, my delusional dream right there, to have said this, and to be remembered as having said it – don’t punish.
And maybe it starts out slowly, embarrassed, persecuted people getting together to not bully each other in basements and grottoes, and to raise their kids away from the Old Testament world, or perhaps that’s only the story the world makes up looking back from some future about it, but if things were going to improve for this species and its environment, for that future to be we need to pass the test and put down the club.
I wouldn’t mind being remembered as one of the people who told you this, but mostly only because that means you remember somebody told you this. Credit would nice of course, then I could flex on Jesus because I think the only person on Earth gives him credit for saying “don’t punish” (unqualified like that, global) so far is me. I heard you, Buddy! What hoops do the priests jump through to say it’s right not to punish adulteresses and sons who go walkabout (crimes at the time and in that place, I guess) but still wrong not to punish every petty thief and curious toddler?
We forgot about Dre’d on poor Jesus. Love the beat, Man. Oh, were you saying something?
Jeff
Feb. 26th., 2020
Abuse with an Excuse 