A Chronic Moral Dilemma: Religion and Our Own Conscience, Part 1
Most people are far too decent for the morality they have been subjected to. When we contemplate how we live and how we affect others in the process, we want to be viewed positively. This is why many cling to the cultural standard, even if they see it being misused.
Have you ever explored a topic and though having many elements defined, still could not put a finger on a thing’s essence? You make an assumption upon which all of your calculations are based, but something’s off. Eventually you identify the source of your inquest, and calculating from there, everything works out. It is the same with moral judgment. When you replace the many claimed sources with the nature of existence, everything falls into place.
As a people, we suffer the bipartisan animosity reared by this moral confusion: the unthinking side rigidly following popular morality in haughty righteousness, while independent people dismiss its many ludicrous hassles, and with good reason. What rationality prevents, religion permits. Religion has shown what a free reign of its supremacy would mean in the medieval savagery of the Dark Ages, and the paranoid horror of the Salem witch trials. No one wants to get bogged down in another period of mystic ooze. Without an alternative path leading to moral stability, we have stayed in low gear, spiritually. What has been missing is context, and what makes the riddle of morality clear is the earned versus the unearned; the deserved versus the confiscated; the life-furthering versus the life-destroying.
Heaven and Earth
In childhood, I was told that heaven was whatever I wanted it to be. But I wanted to deserve the world around me. Ownership through earnership. Why did they think I wanted it for free?
The immoral image of heaven or any utopia, is getting everything for nothing; never having to lift a finger. We see the practical result of that in slums, welfare offices, and in those who do pursue it, by pulling insurance jobs, staging accidents, and filing nuisance suits. We see it in Islamic Fundamentalism and Third-world slave states, yet an effortless existence is consistently glorified by religion—something no truly moral man would ever want. Pursuing their land flowing with milk and honey, as these are products of human effort, all they bring about is a land flowing with blood. Such people spend their lives chasing illusions, fatally loyal in treason to Earth and all those they encounter. This is not Divine Circumstance, but simple neurosis.
We hear, “If this footstool is your heaven, you are not aiming very high.” They put down their flesh, their wants, their work, their relationships, and their lives. But in life they are a mind looping in panic. They consider reality to be beside the point, and the point is, their wish. They declare life to be senseless, and given the way they live, they are right. If life here doesn’t matter, then why bother opposing those who live here and love it?
Hell
It has always been implied that we risk losing our souls if we question Fear-driven clergy, claiming that to defy them is to defy God. Often, such intimidating leaders can’t convey anything without deserving to get maced. We are condemned for our daily greed in that hour-long commute, eight hours of disciplined focus, and that second hour-long commute. They leave us no chance, making us evil by birth (Original Sin). Look at a newborn; isn’t it evil? It is Man: notice its fangs, its claws, and its violent intentions. Notice its black heart (sarcasm intended). Imagine the parents of a newborn froggy bearing down on him to say “See those legs? If you were a decent frog, you wouldn’t have to hop.” Or plant parents saying “If you were a decent plant, you wouldn’t have to strive for water, light, and air. You wouldn’t stretch out to greet its warmth, but be humbled under the sun.” Pointing to an uprooted, dried and shriveled weed, they’d say “That is virtue before the Lord.” Ridiculous and unnatural for other species, that is exactly what the Spirit Murderers have done to Man. The only black hearts are to be found in those who perpetrate such nonsense, grown men whom out of moral carelessness, tell children they are evil. We listen to their chaste of sacrifice, self-denial, humbleness, and repression, then get up the next morning and proceed to make all the right moves with no moral credit.
Independent judgment is held as spiritual treason, to be countered with the most horrific retributions in their afterlife. We are taught to trust in their guidance alone: the cornerstone of abject dependence and politically, of dictatorship.
There is no punishing a trait of all men and there is no preexisting human evil. Such an idea violates the very definition of morality—the choice to do good or evil, which also requires the freedom to choose. There should be no questioning of human capacities—only using them. Guilt should be attached to its proper cause: the unwillingness to carry our own burdens in life. Those who have interpreted Man as evil have given us their own self-estimate. There is no Hell, beyond what the Spirit Murderers make of life.
Warrior Note: A guilt accused of all men leaves no benefactor to atone to.