Treason of the Radicals, part I

"Man has to suffer. When he has no real afflictions, he invents some."

Jose Marti

Truer words on the Western mind have never been spoken. The West, with its ceaseless infatuation with the self, that ever-elusive idea that each person is unique in his own right or in her own abilities, has never stopped with its sickening self-infatuation long enough to contemplate the true status of the world about it. Why should it? As long as there are constructs that exist for the pure purpose of gratification of the self, and so long as these constructs break down the world into packets that are easily digestible by the masses, the West will never have to wake from its self-glorification that is the constant creation of new vices, harms, evils, threats, and afflictions. This means that the basic ideology of the West, one that focuses not only on the being of one person as being individual (I have to restrain myself from using the Dilbert term "In-duh-viduals") will be one that constantly produces and invents new woes for the self-gratification of the self.

Why are woes and pains one of the greatest forms of self-gratification? Simply put, it gives someone a reason to feel like they have a reason to flatter themselves with the ideals of purity, innocence, and, ultimately, validity for whatever cause they have allowed to consume and define their life. If one has a villain, one has a purpose. If one has had a transgression against them, they have righteousness. If one has a poison, one can make a remedy. One aspect of this, one troubling dimension of this, is the definition of one's life not by their own terms by but being in opposition to someone else. Regardless, a woe or a conflict, no matter how invented it is, gives meaning and validity to a life and a self that is otherwise spent and useless.

Enter the church, the media, and the politicians of the United States of America. While I hesitate to call the United States a hyperpower, and I'm certainly not one to play the lyre and sing the epic of her great rise to world dominance, I will admit the singular status of this nation. We have the highest Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in the world, weighing in at first place no matter which criteria you use to evaluate it. In terms of per capita GDP, we rank third and are the highest ranked nation without major national subsidies or other sorts of socialized programs. Our political system is secure with regular exchanges of power in a peaceful manner. Our life expectancy is higher than our fore-fathers ever dreamed. Ethnic strife and racial tensions are now the exception, not the rule. Inter-religious conflict is something that is laughable in this nation. Our military is the most technologically advanced in the world, with bases in 132 nations.

I will not say it is without flaw, and I will not say it is the "greatest nation." Neither of those criteria can be applied to any nation built by man. Nevertheless, this nation has, within its borders, an environment that can best be described as harmonious. Religious groups don't practice mutual immolation on one another. Political parties don't start militias and slaughter one another in the streets of our cities. A tribe from one side of the mountain doesn't attack a tribe down in the river valley (The Hatfields and McCoys, for all practical arguments, stopped fighting in the late 1800s and the gang wars of the 1990s were just another example of white hyperparanoia). This nation lives in tranquility that is virtually unknown except to other industrialized nations of the Western world. Even the traumatic events of September 11, 2001 are the exception, unlike places such as Lebanon and the war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo.

So then, on to the perpatrators of these self-indulgent crimes. First off, the church. Not the Church, but the collection of people who accept Trinitarian doctrine as set down at Nicea and subsequent ecumenical councils. Growing up in the Methodist church, the more poetic version of the Apostles' Creed that I learned goes something like this:

I believe in God the Father Almighty,

maker of heaven and earth;

And in Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord:

who was conceived by the Holy Spirit,

born of the Virgin Mary,

suffered under Pontius Pilate,

was crucified, dead, and buried;

the third day he rose from the dead;

he ascended into heaven,

and sitteth at the right hand of God the Father Almighty;

from thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.

I believe in the Holy Spirit,

the holy catholic church,

the communion of saints,

the forgiveness of sins,

the resurrection of the body,

and the life everlasting. Amen.

Beautiful when recited by the lay. Anyways, that's the church. The church, especially the branches of Protestantism indigenous to the Western Hemisphere, have always been the scare-mongering, anti-intellectual, opiating, hateful bastions for the gullible and self-indulgent. Simply put, at its very core the church professes an idea that Jesus Christ is your chaffeur into heaven. He died for your sins when He was up there on the cross. He actually felt your individual transgressions and was willing to do whatever it took to get you into heaven. You may pass Go, you may collect 200 dollars, you may put hotels on Boardwalk scotch-free. So, we have a deity coming to Earth to alleviate the sinful condition each man is born with for the sake of each individual human, not for humanity. How much more self-indulgent can something actually be?! To be blunt, it can't. But it can provide for an institution wherein lesser forms of self-indulgence can gestate. Simply put, by taking up the sword and shield, and crusading against the very society they are a part of, the church becomes a potent breeding ground for gratification of the self:

• Enforced Morality - What better way of giving righteousness and validity to someone than by telling them the very society they happen to be a part of is immoral, corrupt, indecent, and vile. The creation of an Us and Them paradigm is, simply put, the easiest way to glorify one's self. How? Simply by destroying another person by creating an alien set of criteria they neither believe in nor adhere to and will automatically fail, becoming a self-predicting prophecy that ends positively for the Crusaders of American Protestantism.
• Us/Them, Good/Evil - They are bad. We are good. Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia and Eastasia has always been our ally. What good is this kind of thought except to create two clear-cut, absolute communities with which one can contrast itself against the other, namely the Us group versus the Them group? Simply because one group falls short of an idea does not mean by any means that yours is exemplar. In addition to that, this sort of mindset fails within Christianity itself. For example, some of the more radical branches of Christianity adhere to a belief that even the most tacit approval of abortion is a sin, and therefore evil, vile, etc. So, then what of the more liberal branches of Catholicism, Methodism, Episcopalianism, Lutheranism, and some Northern evangelical churches? Are these people, their Christian brethren in the holy catholic church, evil, repugnant, hell-bound sinners? Yes, according to these far-right doctrines, they are. Within Christianity itself, this doctrine fails as the community that is, as a whole, supposed to be morally-upstanding and naturally gravitate to the same God-given ideas of right and wrong is torn asunder.

Of course, one can go on and on with the sins of the church. Yet one would be a fool to think that the plague of self-gratification that leads one to bury oneself in pity and remorse is perpretrated by the church alone. No, this is a recent development of the church. As science explained more and more of life and the universe, as society tended to move away from the morality imposed by a plethora of sects, the church found itself having to fight for its survival. Is it any surprise, then, that the most vocal, most ardent, most firebrand radical denominations of all are the fastest growing sects, while the most ecumenically-minded sects are dropping in enrollment? With the exception of the Latter-Day Saints, fundamentalism and Crusaderism has returned in force as the church finds itself appealing more and more to the base needs and emotional wants of the self.

They are not alone, though. Media and politics are right there by their side, providing easy access to the one thing every self needs to feel like it has a reason to strive to live: drama and psuedo-anguish.