Tag Archives: Meaning of life

Mumbo Jumbo

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In these divisive times of disparate beliefs and alternate realities it seems reasonable to weigh with care one’s personal offerings on subjects of controversy. Strong opinions will arise inevitably in all of us paying attention to the political narrative these days, our chosen news feeds providing us with sound bites of ‘logical’ support for our irrefutable truths. Voicing opinion may best be tempered in the interests of momentary calm, but such a stance seems rarely practiced.

I’ve been reading about the concept of Mumbo Jumbo, an adaptable personage in the traditional cultures of Central Africa. When conflicts emerge, often within the polygamous harems, Mumbo Jumbo may appear with masked face, top hat and staff to gather the community and then single out the most egregious disruptor for punishment.

I’m wondering if a similar sort of magical thought may be creeping into our thinking these days.

Mind Parasites

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As I’ve been recalling, lately, events of my teenage years in the small town I grew up in, I’m getting the eerie feeling that the occurrences I recall didn’t happen as I remember them occurring rather in a world of unreality, a fantasy world that, viewed in retrospect couldn’t ever have been.

Even though my recent remembrances aren’t all happy memories as one might suppose imagining a nostalgic past: I think of unpleasant things and actions sometimes that make me wince at my naivete, the bizarro world I imagine is unreal, the sense I have of these past events and places is unexplainable as being due simply to my youthful lack of worldly knowledge.

Anyway, I’ve been reading about mind parasites that exist, as I understand it, in everyone’s deepest subconscious floating about in the ocean of collective consciousness subtly poking and prodding, manipulating memories in parasitic acquisition that may be detrimental to the unaware driving some to harmful personal behaviors. The only way to counter these parasites is to maintain awareness of their existence but to not call them out, maintain rather a personal center of stability in order to overcome their manipulations.
I’m not fully on board with such theory but I guess it doesn’t hurt to stay a bit vigilant; review the past, seek photo references and such.

Where Faith Comes In

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I’ve been reading about the idea that humankind, every individual, harbors an innate ‘inner essence’ that evolved from our earliest human beginnings. The ability to recognize and then contemplate the significance of this benevolent inner spirit enabled us to find the common ground of our humanity and gain the realization of a larger benevolence existing beyond the limits of our mortality.

Being human, the theory goes, we may on occasion lose sight of this gift from time to time, distracted as we are by our mundane routines and limited intellects, but the reality of the ineffable ‘Being with in us’ is never irrevocably, irretrievably lost and will prove to be, if nourished, the conduit to a richly fulfilling awareness of existence otherwise unrealizable.

The problem for some, I suppose, is the necessity of employing the intellect to address a concept beyond intellectual scrutiny; I guess that’s where faith comes in.

Immortality

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I’ve been reading that death, to die, wasn’t always in the evolutionary cards. Science speculates that the earliest life forms (single cell Amoeba, I’m guessing) didn’t die, that death emerged during evolution because it was advantageous to survival of the species. Over population being the problem, I suppose; a lesson to be learned considering the pressure humankind is putting on the earth’s resources these days.

Now we have big money interests pursuing the science involved in rehabilitating human cells in order to reverse the aging process with the hope of extending life indefinitely. It’s human nature, I guess, to want to postpone, even imagine the elimination of death. It all has me wondering though, how happy we’d be if we lost the uncertainty we experience as we fall into the small death of sleep, the elation of discovering in the morning we live another day.

The Limitations of Language and Memory

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I’ve been thinking lately that language is a limiting and essentially inadequate means of describing experience. (As I think about this it occurs to me I’ve probably thought this very thing before; in fact, I doubt I’ve had a truly original thought anytime recently).

Anyway, language may be the only way of describing experience, but the descriptions rendered no matter the mastery one may have of the written word will fall well short of sufficiently describing the color and complexities of sensual experience.

Roland Barthes, the late French literary theorist, said that man cannot know, understand prior to developing at least a rudimentary language. I’m inclined to disagree with such an idea. It seems to me my colorful and complex sensual experiences can occur to my conscious self without interpretation; that it is unnecessary for language to supervene upon my experiences for them to actually exist. 

But, then, maybe my memory is going, I am aging after all; brain cells are being lost. Still, the visual imagery is there and doesn’t seem to require captions. I’m thinking language is over-rated. It simply is unable to account for the ineffable.

 

Medieval Entertainments

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I’ve been reading that entertainment in late medieval France involved, for many of the unlettered inhabitants’ activities and performances we today might find a bit disturbing.

The Church was always on the lookout for those among the population whose behaviors might suggest possession by the devil (or devils, I guess). Exorcisms were a popular occurrence attended by the citizenry who looked with rapt attention as devils were extricated from the possessed by various means sometimes involving holy water enemas.

Women who were known to employ magic were considered in league with the devil and so declared witches subject to burning at the stake or drowning unless she floated in which case she would be burned. Such events were another well attended attraction no doubt.

These uneducated medieval folks saw most everything in terms of the supernatural. Fear of the Devil was a significant aspect of their reality. Satanic power begets respect leading many to participate in Black Sabbaths where the Evil One was worshipped, moral abandonment the rule, promiscuity encouraged, and great fun was had by all.

I guess for the average medieval townsfolk all was not pain and hardship, entertainments were there to be had if one could avoid becoming the focus of attention.

Impending Disaster

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It’s pretty easy to get caught up in the proliferation of bad news I’m constantly bombarded with these days. I’m made aware, daily, of impending disasters awaiting me around nearly every corner. Attacks are perpetrated and battles are waged on multiple fronts by various actors, in various ways, stressing the limits of my abilities to realize some semblance of peace. The psychic discomfort I experience from following the news makes it difficult to maintain any sort of optimistic outlook, any sense of an ultimate ‘happily ever after’ scenario ever becoming possible in this life. If only I could glimpse even pinpricks of light passing through the shroud of impending gloom I might be able to catch a breath, slow my heart rate down a bit.

Of course, I’m thinking these things as I sit here sipping hot chocolate while reclining in the living room of my home where I will soon take to bed to catch my regular 8 hours and rise in the morning to read of another day’s multiple disasters.

I’m not sure how to think about such contradiction.

A Light at the end of the Tunnel

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I’m a little concerned with my near obsession with the writings of the Romanian Philosopher Emil Cioran; he was a most egregious misanthrope who wrote with great profundity, drawing me into ideas I fear would feed the innate skepticism I harbor and would find not particularly useful in keeping my demeanor sunshiny. I try to keep in mind the post-WWII world he lived in, one he must have seen as a moral low point in the history of western civilization.

Anyway, in his aphorisms, E. C. vehemently condemns mankind’s false distractions (mainly religious idealisms) the obsession with which dooms man’s existence to inconsequence. Fear of the nothingness of existence, he writes, compels man to conjure beliefs, champion absolutes, to impose on others’ Truths in the hopes of gaining reinforcements sold on the delusions of life’s meaningfulness. What can man expect to gain were he to overcome such delusional thinking? Well, not a whole lot. Life will still be a painful experience, suffering the rule; slow physical deterioration and the realization existence has no meaningful worth must be expected.

As I process E. C.’s reasonable lines of thought I happened upon a big But: maintaining imagination, creating inventive scenarios, reveling in the beauty of nature will (while still a distraction) provide a means of surviving an otherwise disgusting existence. The fluidity with which the aesthetic mind can flow, travel between imaginings, provides the basis for hope. I’m sure E. C. wouldn’t agree.

Ladies of God

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I’ve been reading about the many visionary women living during times of particular religious fervor who the Catholic church eventually endowed with sainthood. What made these women special was, that from an early age, they experienced altered states of consciousness, euphoric experiences during which they were able to channel God, were able to perform miracles, heal the sick and provide life affirming insights to those in need.

Catherine Emmerich was an 18th century mystic who received the stigmata, the wounds of Christ, which must have been a credibility producing event beyond doubt. Catherine of Siena, through rigorous fasting experienced a mystical marriage to Jesus at which time she received the ring of his foreskin (providing, I suspect, motivation to require circumcision of all males in the future). Bridget of Sweden, a practicing ascetic experienced over 600 visions in her life. Dorothea of Montau, a 14th century mystic, became an Anchoress, spending her life confined to a cell attached to the cathedral in Kwidzyn in what is now Poland.

What all these women seem to have in common is deep sense of religious mystery that led them to extreme commitment to God and the Church even at the expense of their own physical well-being. There’s small doubt there are commitments people ruin their bodies for these days that are far less significant.

Mother and Child

The Talentless Hero

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I’ve been reading aphorisms by the Romanian philosopher Emil Cioran. E. C. was an extreme misanthrope of such pessimistic belief it led his distraught mother, unable to understand his negativity to tell him she wished he’d never been born, that had she known what he’d become she’d have aborted him.

As I seek something enlightening (or at least redeemable) in his writings I find him relating that, while life is a misery, chronically painful, that suffering is universal and never ending and that most people are too pathetic to do anything about it, sustainable existence may lie in hope and the distractions engaging in arts activities might offer. But for the talentless, the disaster which is reality will be overwhelming. E. C. thinks better to give one’s life to heroic acts since there really is nothing to live for. The talentless hero can at least have a sort of remembrance.

As for me, I’m not sure how fair it is to reduce the heroism of, say, a combat troop who falls on a grenade to save his comrades to lack of talent. Still, it’s hard to imagine that an inner life of some sort wouldn’t keep one from diving for cover in such circumstances.