“SATISFACTION.” “Not one man in 10 with a satisfied mind.” -Dylan. Actually it’s less than that; I would think. Yet those I meet in medicine are usually a very needy segment.
One thing that cannot be denied from history; for man enough is never enough.
It always has to be more more more. And the more we have the less we like what we have. “Just a little more money,” said one famous tycoon. Satiety has no meaning for us, we can be vomiting quail eggs and we want more and better and higher and faster. Really, this was Hitler’s well kept secret.
The cost of rising expectations is that a society or culture will surely be overdrawn and over-extended. This leads to defeat and humiliation, as Napoleon and so many others have found out, or rather, encountered as the proverbial brick wall. But did these leaders ever learn the secret of their failures? No, they said that the people failed them! There was nothing wrong with their, “No Limits” planning, it was just that the people did not have enough faith in them. And so it goes. We do not learn from history, and that is doubly true of the ambitious lot who want to lead, yet are not called to do so. Mr. Trump comes to mind.
Man is a restless soul who wants to be self-justified, not God-justified. If we really wanted “no limits,” we would trust in God, not man. The words on our coinage are an increasingly untenable lie. Our nation is not one, not under God, and in God we do NOT trust, that much is clear. We just want our piece of the pie. No, that’s not true either. We want the whole pie to ourselves. If we give any away, we make sure everyone knows about it, like the hypocrites of Jesus’s time. At least get the tax credits!
People are not prone to change even though we flatter ourselves that we are so very open to it. Our basic sin nature is not something that we voluntarily give up, and we are so addicted to it that we find it impossible to do the right thing without divine help and standards at the very least. Even then most people, of the Law shall I say, reject the Holy Spirit, without which the Law is dead, and deals only death.
And we are largely moved by our feelings, not by measured thought processes. The very idea that intellectuals are moved by reason is not only boastful, it is not true at all in my experience. Scientists? Of which I am a group member? GK Chesterton was right, “What great sentimentalists these men of science are!” Pure reason is impossible at any rate, at least for mankind, so we need no longer pretend otherwise. As in Hitler’s day, science has become propaganda, to allow us to treat others as we wish and to kill to get ahead. How can one escape the accusations of deep bias, going right down to the core of who mankind is?
In some instances in the Old Testament, the people had so much hidden wealth that they had to be restrained from giving, rather like we try in vain to do about political gifts. See Exodus 35 and 36. The leaders had many sacred stones stored up, even though they were nomads at the time.
Is progress, progress? Or a set-up for disaster? Time after time when nations became prosperous they became ruthless, and so it is with USA, today. Yet given globalization, the infection has become world-wide. Our own leprosy has become the warp and woof of the world. Our markets are their markets are everyone’s markets, and all fall down at the same time.
Progress of today is exponential and even the most ardent progressives cannot keep up with it. It is also utterly unsustainable. I am reading Dr. Swenson’s book called, “Balance,” which avers that in societies of today, there is no such thing. Yet balance and homeostasis are built into all created beings. We cannot ignore such things, and I try not to.
The demands of the people are another thing altogether. Men as a whole are insatiable. If they feel tired, they want testosterone and uppers. If this makes them nervous, they want pain killers and tranquilizers. I deal with new drug seekers almost every day, and the gambits they use are the essence of the lying banality of evil, of “man against himself.” The use of “guilting and shaming” is blatant and widespread even as people will readily confess that they believe in nothing. “Nihilism is the air we breathe,” said Flannery O’Connor, and that was in the 50’s!
We always want to build more, as well. (Dubai. Need I say more?) Bigger, higher, and faster to the nth degree. Well, there are many limits, and it appears to me they are now right in our faces, but on we go. I think we all have to be prepared for collapses of a height, width, and depth never seen before on this planet. What exactly it will be, I cannot say, just that involution is not only inevitable, it is occurring at this moment. One thing is certain, that we learned absolutely nothing from, “The Great Recession,” and that we are totally unprepared and unwilling to do anything about skirting more of the same.
Is this, “fretting leprosy?” Are our feet and hands being deformed, even dropping off, bit by increasingly larger bits? Are we developing “leonine facies,” that is, are we looking more like that devil in his pose as a lion, “seeking whom we may devour,” ? All I can say is that I look around and I see very little besides fretting and an increasing plague of leprosy, not from God, but purely from self and selfishness and hatred of God.
All men of course are religious, But most of that is overt or covert hatred of the God who exists independently of our news and views. It is about religion about to the same extent that it is about politics, and these two are inexorably joined at the hip, even though it is a monstrous conjunction.
“Practical Atheism,” (also an O’Connor phrase) is much more widespread than the mere “New Atheism”, as there is nothing new under the sun. Most of the Hebrews who had seen miracles were soon practicing their sophistic stylish atheism in the desert sun. So it has nothing to do with the miraculous or Divine Intervention or the lack thereof, which is more apparent than real. We do not want miracles because then we are accountable.
Men are, as I said, never satisfied; and in particular and specifically they are never satisfied with God. Not at all. I speak as one afflicted, not as one who is Holy. These words of mind are a trial run of a feint of honesty, to see if it has any effect on me or anyone else. Still in all, they are merely words. We will see if I continue to practice the norm, atheism, for the rest of the day.
God forbid.
meeteyorites 