Hello all. Hunter Dixon here with my first post now that Ben has so kindly given me some admin capabilities.
And what an occasion it is. The on-again, off-again column That’s When I Reach For My Revolver has at last arrived at theLocust.org. There is no telling how often new columns will be posted, but to satisfy your urge you can always peruse the archives. So, without further ado, I present you with…
Round Six: “The Power of Christ Compels You!”
I’ve been thinking about death recently. Politics, too, in a kind of mind-numbing Moebius loop of a highway with snipers posted randomly along the breakdown lanes. My worry is that people do not spend enough time thinking about life, death, and (as Alan Davis once said) the small confused bit in between.
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Why do we believe what we believe? Because our parents did. Or because someone close to us did. The problem is, we become too fervent in our beliefs and we get cocky. We begin to believe that we know the rules, the playing field, and the scorecard. Not true. People, when discussing the upcoming election, reveal their inability to think outside of party lines. Even those who support Ralph Nadar often proclaim their intention to vote for Vice President Gore because they don’t want Governor Bush to win. They are victims and prisoners of the two-party system. In modern America’s notorious short-term memory, every political system in the history of government has been a two-party system, and there is no way to change that. We have painted ourselves into a corner and in our minds, the consequences of walking across the room for a martini and then repainting the goddamn floor have become too high.
Which brings me to death, in a way. Death, life, religion, God, and the Devil. Quick, easy topics, as I’m sure you know. The problem with the origins of the universe, whether it’s the Big Bang theory or the God created the Earth and the Heavens in seven days theory, is that you can always go further back. The same problem exists in saying that something is the smallest thing imaginable. What happens when you cut an atom in half with your atom-cutter-in-halfer? And when you cut that half in half? Egads. The mind boggles. If nothing existed before God, how did God come into being? If nothing existed before the Big Bang, where did the matter for the explosion come from?
It seems to me that people are often trapped in a linear, three-dimensional way of thinking. I suppose this is not too surprising, as we are linear, three-dimensional creatures. I guess it would be too much to ask for people to being thinking backward in time. It is difficult for people to imagine something without a beginning or an end. Whenever Galactus shows up to eat the Earth in The Fantastic Four he always announces that “I am the Alpha and the Omega; the beginning and the end,” which sounds very biblical and cool. (In fact, the reason he has a big fucking G on his belt is because he was originally supposed to be God. That’s right, the FF fight God, who wears enormous purple tuning forks on his head. Ah, god bless the Lee/Kirby comics of the sixties. Of course, Jack Kirby is also the man who drew The Black Racer, his embodiment of death, as a guy who flies around on two black skis. They don’t call him “The King” for nothing.) However, no one can quite wrap their head around the concept, it seems. Our minds aren’t ready to deal with some things yet. What if the end of the universe is actually the beginning as well? What if time is an enormous loop, but like the curvature of the Earth, cannot be seen due to our proximity? Unfortunately, on the other hand the inability of the human mind to completely understand alien concepts can quickly become an excuse. God is inexplicable, and so are his origins. Thinking about them and questioning them becomes impossible.
People believe what they’re told, often enough. And then when people learn to think for themselves and decide what they believe, they become too attached to those beliefs. Indoctrinated. When Christians try to tie evolution into the Bible, it makes me laugh so I do not cry. “What’s a day to God?” they ask in reference to the whole seven days bit. Fair enough. But that presupposes that evolution just kinda stopped at some point in the past; however, I think that we’re probably somewhere in the ninth or tenth day by now. Creation, evolution, shagging: it continues.
Something from nothing. People cannot, will not, or do not think back far enough. Good lord, Christians! Your religion was pre-dated by other religions. Many of these religions contained elements later used in Christianity. Ye olde flood story is a good example. It’s arrogance, in a way. So is atheism. Assuming that there is no higher consciousness out there? I sure to God/Whatever hope that humanity is not the most intelligent thing in the cosmos. We created Baywatch, for the luvva Pete!
Aren’t people curious about the truth? Or are people just willing to believe what they’re told, or what they’ve told themselves, and close themselves off from other possibilities? I just finished rereading Legion by William Peter Blatty. It’s the sequel to The Exorcist, and it’s just as interesting, although in different ways. For me, the plot takes a back seat to the character study of Lt. Kinderman and his search for the meaning of just about everything. A wonderful theory is contained in the book. It goes something like this: At some point in the past, you had two entities. You had your God, and your Lucifer. Now remember, Lucifer is also known as the Light Bringer, is often described as being beautiful, and so on. So, one whatever (no days really existed yet) Lucifer decides he wants to create himself. God agrees, so Lucifer explodes into a countless directions, shooting out across the universe. So now you’ve got your Big Bang.
And the rest of it, the rest of our human story, is simply Lucifer re-forming. Evolution, death, and the afterlife—it’s all one being slowly pulling himself back together. This is why God cannot interfere. This is why there is death and suffering and so on, and yet still a God. I thought this was a rather tidy solution. This would also account for wonderfully mysterious things like the collective unconscious, psychic abilities, and so on. It makes the human race, the earth, the entire cosmos, a little bit closer. And so I like this theory a lot.
Of course, how did God and Lucifer come to be? What was going on before? Ah, who knows. What I like about Kinderman, and Blatty, is that he’s thinking. He’s not taking what he’s been told for granted. He’s coming up with new theories. He acknowledges them as simply theories. He knows he has much to learn. He is open to new thoughts.
Keep this in mind as 7 November 2000 approaches. Democrat or Republican, Christian or atheist, open your mind to new thoughts. Realize that there is more to the world than simply religion or not-religion, the political left or the political right, the human and the inhuman. Realize that very often when we think we know the answers, we do not. Realize that it took a very long time for humanity to reach a distance great enough to witness with the naked eye the curvature of the Earth. And hope. Hope that one day our minds expand and we can look at time, space, and humanity from a similar vantage point.
Hunter Dixon
Columnist, theLocust.org
2 November 2000
