Apologies for commenting before I finished the article, but I had to pause for a moment and get this out:
I think you're right, they do seem afraid this time. Not offended, not feigning outrage, *terrified*.
But I don't think it's violence or exposure they're afraid of. They know how to deal with violence. They've been doing that for ages. Identifying, infiltrating, dismantling, or redirecting it to their own ends. And they know how to deal with exposure: squirt a cloud of ink, flash some bright lights and loud sounds in the periphery, and scurry away in the confusion. The 15-minute average attention span of domesticated consumers and near non-existent long term memory guarantees a critical mass of people will always be ready to accept the new narrative once it coalesces.
It's laughter they're afraid of. I know it's a cliche in the meme wars, but I've been thinking about it a lot lately and like a lot of memes, it has a kernel of truth. It's not that some of us will now know what they were up to. For all intents and purposes we already did. We just have the receipts now, and as mentioned, the receipts don't matter.
It's that we can see how *tawdry*, how *incompetent*, how obvious and pathetic and pointless and stupid it all is. We see that they're not the masters of the universe, that they're not brilliant Machiavellian schemers, that there's no big elaborate plan. We see that they're just idiots and losers and petty grifters. They were succeeding merely because nobody lifted a finger to stop them, because everyone who could have was just as debased and stupid as they were. And we're *laughing* at them for it, and they *hate* that.
Because the greatest sin of this particular brand of demon is pride. They hang their pride on the walls in the form of shiny certificates and endless titles. They parade it around at prestigious events, access to which is proof of their superiority. They swell with it when they get away with crimes that the rest of us would be imprisoned for. It drips from every condescending word they speak. And now we're laughing.
Monsters fear artists because we hold a mirror to them and show them what they are, and because we help others see them for what they are. But these monsters aren't terrifying horrors from the cosmic abyss. They're diseased, disfigured, degenerate, pathetic, disgusting, sub-human, the worst and lowest of us. They're Dorian Gray as seen in portrait, and we're *laughing at them*. We're taking their pride away.
By the tens and hundreds and thousands they're being humiliated and scattered to the winds, and the ones that haven't been sent off to the unemployment lines are afraid that they're next, and they know they have nothing whatsoever of any use to offer now that their grifts are over and their sinecures are rescinded. They're going to be pumping our gas and picking our strawberries and learning to smile and say "would you like fries with that," or else they're going to starve.
That's what they fear. And it feels great to see the fear in their eyes.
"It's laughter they're afraid of. I know it's a cliche in the meme wars, but I've been thinking about it a lot lately and like a lot of memes, it has a kernel of truth."
Yes. It burns like fire in their ears.
I agree with the rest of this too. The Picture of Dorian Gray was something I was actually writing about in a future chapter of this. That's also in the "Don't Look!" category. Because what happens when you actually look? That can only end one way or the other.
Thanks, Scotlyn. It's always been something that bothered me about his stories. "Animal Farm" is another fine example of it. That's not to say they don't have value. We can still build the other 9/10ths of that bridge.
The trap Winston Smith fell into by nursing his secret hatred of the party, was to be misled into thinking that fighting AGAINST what you HATE can lead to the good.
There are several prongs to this trap.
1) What you contemplate you imitate. Keep your steady focus on what you hate, you will soon become more and more like it.
2) Fighting against what you hate almost necessarily brings about the splitting of means from ends, the actual from the ideal - ie the temptation to use evil means (now) because the imaginary good ends (later) will be worth it. All actual ends flow from the actual means used to attain them, it cannot be otherwise, intentions notwithstanding.
3) To be full of hate is to be hateful - which gets built into a sense of self. Hatefulness becomes its own perpetuator. You end up keeping what you hate locked in place so that you can keep on hating it, forever and ever with no end.
It is ironic, then, that the way out of this trap - which is ALWAYS open to EVERY ONE of us - to fight FOR what you LOVE - was also tripmined and made especially treacherous for Winston, via the "Ministry of Love's" re-education process which (reportedly) taught him to "love" Big Brother.
A very perverse inversion of love! And, as you say, a tale that is all monster's warning, and no hero's answer.
Anyway, the rest of this post was a good read, and now I'm on tenterhooks for the next one. :)
Alright, finished now. And as always, a banger. I think I might have some idea of where you're going with this, but I'll hold thoughts on it until you get the rest out.
Oh and something I should add to my other comment: to be clear, I don't think the imps we're seeing right now are the end of it. I've just seen them for what they were for a long time. Pride is a sin I'm very personally familiar with and it's easy to spot it in others. Takes one to know one.
But imps are administrative servants, not masters, by design. And I don't think we're going to find the ultimate master embodied in some Klaus Shwab / George Soros style villain. Those are just more imps, of the same general variety. You've already done a lot to highlight several of the other varieties. It's not over until we find the thing that makes them and destroy it, and I don't think we get to do that here in "Dimension X."
Yeah. It seems to me there's a very long chain-of-command involved. I figure most of the minds who inhabit it are pretty dimwitted, and some are probably totally oblivious to the Big Dumb Plan. "Imps" is a good way to put it, even if we're referring to agents that are (physically) human. "Stooges" works too. Nyuk Nyuk Nyuk!
I'm curious as to the chapter in the gospels you're referring to. I think i know but I don't want to spoil it. But just maybe it's in Saint John's gospel?
And for leaving us all with the cliff hanger at the end!
Just two thoughts if I may.
1. A perspective on Christ and grotesque realism.
2. A small section from my book I am close to completing (for anyone interested.)
Now, with regards to one.
A particular strain of literary theme and form that was of particular interest in the medieval period was grotesque realism (see Mikail Bahktin's Rabelais). Although the theme is interpreted as an over emphasis on gore and disgust, the genre can also be interpreted as the inversion of normative categories. For example, associating beauty with goodness is inverted by associating goodness with the ugly (an example of this inversion was Shrek, whereas orgres are normally evil and dangerous, Shrek was sensitive and "layered" with goodness within). In addition to inversion, good grotesque realism captures Lovecraftian fear and horror within itself to showcase Otherness and the wonder of mystery.
There is a certain beauty within fear that can be as captivating as beauty. For example, the Uruk Hai in Peter Jackson's LOTR movies are, although evil, very cool. Their black armour, tiny slits across the eyes of their helms, and screeching teeth hide their deformed and grotesque natures within their armour, which adds to their terror and threat. Plus, they look cool!
Now, to get to my point. As a pastor wisely taught me long ago, if you Fear God, you will fear nothing else in comparison. You taught that so well in this essay. In our highly effeminate culture especially, the masculine urge to respect those with greater or higher power has been diminished by over compassion and empathy for the Other. Christ has been made to appear soft, weak, and feminine (Jesus meek and mild!) to cater to our feminine modern capabilities.
But the real Jesus, the real God of Gods, was not like that. And, as I am trying to capture in my own book (and reaching my point finally), in Christ we see the perfect summation of fear, horror, beauty, love, wonder, and mystery not only in one person, but in one particular event, which was the cross.
At the cross, the horror, barbarism, and grotesqueness of the scene would be too much for modern sensibilities. On the cross, Jesus was 100 percent naked (no loin cloth like in the movies), He had chunks of beard and flesh ripped from his face, his entire back muscles and flesh would have been stripped away from the flogging, and the beating would have been too much to watch. And the agony of the cross itself.
It is the inversion of power from a worldly perspective, and the victory of ugliness. But, those with wisdom (1 Cor 1), see beyond the horror to see the truth and beauty of the event. And, more than that, the absolute horror and terror that would be involved in the event.
Because, as we read, as the people and Pharisees jeered at him, all of a sudden the earth quaked violently. Although it was midday, the sun went dark. Blackness came upon the earth.
The crowd and Pharisees stopped jeering and fled in terror as reality dawned on them.
F#$%
This is not an ordinary person. This is something bigger than us, something more elemental at play, a great power and mystery beyond human capacity. How friggin insanely frightening that moment was for the whole earth when Christ died (as the historian Thallus wrote about as well).
I can't even imagine. The only comparable event that we have in recent memory was the solar eclipse of last year. It was, for a moment, a small realization that humans are very small, the universe very big, we are not in control, and death comes for us all. And Christ is king over all these things. It is terrifying, and not good news if you're not covered by his blood. It's too much terror to even comprehend, but more relieving than words to be saved, and protected by the very one who would be your worst enemy.
2. For anyone interested, here is a scene from the book I am close to completing. This will be long, so I included it in the reply, rather than the comments. For anyone who cares, enjoy!
It was silent with a dark suspense.
And, with suddenness and great dread, I could feel something standing in the darkness right in front of me. As I felt the presence of something in front of me. The flickering light of the candle in the Inner Court burst into a small flame once more, revealing a small orange and yellow light that mixed with the blue sapphire ice of the inner court, just like the first time I came into the temple. (MIMIC your first encounter here with your heart). A shadowy blue light fell over the temple in the midst of the dark cloud. I looked out directly.
Before me there was a man, smaller in size or stature than myself. The man wore a heavy, pitch-black cloak that covered him from the head, all the way to his hidden feet. The cloak was heavily tattered, and ragged. The cloak looked very, very, old. The hood of the cloak covered the man’s head.
I stared looking at the cloaked figure, and the cloaked figure in black stared back at me.
It was silent as the two of us stood staring at one another in the outer court; the only sound was the flickering candle light and odd crack of the flame.
As I looked out upon the cloaked figure right in front of me, I felt, just like I did for the first time I saw him out in the lake at the beginning, a great feeling of dread and horror of fear. The hairs stood up on the back of my neck, a chill went down my spine, and goosebumps went uncomfortable down my arms.
It was an encounter with something Other, something uncontrollable or explainable beyond myself.
My terror was the salute that mortal flesh gives to immortal things.
Every intuition inside of me began to rage in fear, every biological urge to flee struck with the power of millions of years of ingrained natural instinct as the power of fear raged within me.
Suddenly, from the depths of my heart, as if being spoken to, I heard from the inside of my broken heart the sound of a voice I remembered with deep and sincere clarity. From something inside of my heart, I heard the voice of Lucifer:
“Flee!
Do not trust or believe this man!
Flee, PJ!
This Man is dangerous!
Flee!”
I turned to flee in complete fear as the Cloaked Figure stood motionless. But, even as I turned to flee, I grasped the hilt of the sword in my hand, and I remembered the words that Jordo spoke to me,
“When the fear of the Captain comes upon you, you must master your fear, stand your ground with courage and bravery. Do not flee.”
I smiled at the memory of his words. And, even as I smiled, I felt a shimmer of light from the sword go out into my bloodstream, filling me with a small spark of courage. The voice of Lou went quiet inside me, and I stood my ground. I put my shoulders back with confidence, and squared my legs wide with balance, ready to face the One before me.
As I squared my legs, and put my shoulders back, the Cloaked Figure in front of me nodded his head, as if recognizing and inclining itself to my smallest ounce of courage. The light of the flame within the Inner Court sparked a little brighter. And then, one more time, I heard the memory of the voice of my friend Jordo within myself:
“You will see the Captain in His true form.”
What did that mean, ‘I would see the Captain in His true form?’ I was not sure what that meant. A moment passed, and I stood before the Cloaked Figure. However, despite my uncertainty, and unsure of what would happen next, I nodded my head back to the Cloaked figure.
Receiving my invitation, the head of the Cloaked Figure fell to its chest, and it exhaled, almost painfully and sadly, as if the revelation and preparation of the moment would be costly. I was surprised at the reaction, because the head falling to the chest was a sign of great weakness; a sign I did not expect from a creature so powerful, terrifying, and dark. The man behind the cloak, almost as if sensing the moment, raised his head from his chest to look at me one more time, and then, with a small twitch, the black cloak fell to the floor. The mystery was revealed, and before me was the form of the figure now fully exposed.
Nothing in all of the world could have prepared me for what I saw.
Before me, there was a naked man. Except, the flesh of the man was so flayed, so grotesque, so gruesome, disturbed, disfigured, bloody, broken, and marred it hardly resembled human. I was so appalled at the sight of him, the body so marred beyond human likeness, his appearance so hauntingly hideous in its injury and disfiguration, the body so mangled, so hideously broken, so gruesome and grotesque it could only be described as pure horror. I fell to the ground on my knees, the sword dropping helplessly from my grip clanging to the floor as I clutched my face with a great scream of horror and disgust as I began to retch at the sight and the stench of a body so ripped and torn apart.
Upon the head, there was a cruel crown of sharp black thorns piercing into the skull of the cranium which was crusted over with deep scars of flayed blood around the puncture holes in the skin. Around the crown of blood-encrusted thorns there was long brown hair. However, the hair was wild and stripped, and was covered in green mucus and stinky snot that dripped to the floor as if he had been spit on innumerable times. However, although some parts of the hair were long, there were long chunks of hair that looked like they had been completely ripped out to the core by many hands pulling on the follicles. So deep were the rips of the chunks of his hair I could see bare, yellow skull at the roots of the cranium. His face was drenched in blood, and one of his eyes was out of its sockets, attached by a stringy red flesh dangling by his cheek; it seemed as if it had been beat so bad it had come clean out. The eye was dead and gaunt, white with the haunt of stinking flesh that was blind and could no longer see. The other eye was deep purple and black, the ultimate bruised eye, punched to a pulp, almost closed with laceration and bruising, with barely a slit open to see a brown eye behind the swelling. The nose had a wide, deep gash across it that would take hundreds of stitches to fix together. The ear on the right side was extremely ugly, and cauliflowered with a gross bubble of foaming puss; the other ear was torn clean off, revealing a gaping hole, as if from the same clutching hands that ripped out his hair. Most of his teeth had been knocked clean out from heavy punches, only a few jagged edges of yellow teeth were evidenced. The tongue hung up attached to the top of the mouth, sealed with cracked and torn lips of exhaustion, water deprivation, and thirst.
Deep gashes were across his cheeks, and his beard, like the hair, was long, but ripped out in many places as if torn out by clutching hands. The beard was ripped so hard in places that I could see the stretches of open ligaments and chunks of yellowy ligament and the red blood of exposed jaw bone. The top lip was badly cut with a severe laceration, and half of the bottom lip was hanging clean off from the face. It would not be inaccurate to say his head more resembled a skull than anything human.
Most curiously and disgustingly, the head and face was smeared in a brown and black goo amongst the blood from which the heavy smell of feces and vinegar was protruding so badly I had to plug my nose. Stuck in the feces on his face were little chips of what looked like a yellowy-white sponge, as if a sea sponge covered in human feces and vinegar was thrust and smeared into his face.
The body of the man was as badly beaten as the head and face. He had powerful shoulders, strong arms, and large hands. He looked like he had the strong body of an experienced blue-collar worker, like a welder or a carpenter, with a slight dad-bod complexion and roundish belly; he was not jacked or cut like the body of Lou from earlier. His body was strong, but quite plain; and utterly destroyed and torn to shreds. There was a gaping wide deep and heavy gash right across his chest, as if a sharp dagger were brought across it slowly. The skin from the cut was flayed open like a fish, revealing the gross flubby white colour of human fat near the exposed muscle. The shoulders and abdomen were slashed and flayed so badly the bare bones of the body were revealed in gaping wounds in front of me. It looked like the body had been whipped and flayed by leather straps attached to knives. The shoulders of both arms were completely disfigured and badly dislocated, sticking out in opposite directions that were completely abnormal to normal human anatomy. One arm hung loosely at his side dislocated, the other was stuck awkwardly across his body; the arms had been wrenched out of their sockets as if pulled badly left and right at improper angles.
The legs, like the body, were a complete mess of tarnished muscle and severe and bleeding lacerations. The right quad, from the top of the hip to the knee cap, as if peeled down like a banana peel, was ripped at the top and folded down from the top to the bottom of the knee cap, where it withered hideously in the open air barely attached to a few sinews at the knee. The inner fibula bone was exposed, surrounded by unattached sinews, ligaments, and tendons. The left was sliced up like a butcher’s shop. The legs were caved inwards and awkwardly turned in, wrenched inwards against their nature. The Achilles tendons of both calves were snapped and noticeably curled up inside the skin, as if they had popped from overuse and exhaustion at an improper angle. Around the mid section, quite horribly, the phallus and exposed reproductive organs appeared to be pulverized and squashed, as if given special attention in the beating by a large hammer as a symbol of male weakness, infertility, and the failure of a dead soldier.
However, despite the gruesome and grotesque imagery, there were two things that I noticed most about the broken body before me. On the side of his abdomen, just at the ribs, there was a massive and gaping wide hole from which heavy amounts of blood and water were flowing, as if a spear had been thrust into the flesh, piecing the man. The puncture and wound was so severe the guts, and intestines of the inner body were draping out like dangling rope, almost touching the ground.
Lastly, on both the feet, and the hands, there were two scarred and crusted gaping wide holes that were punctured clean through to the other side. It was if a heavy, rusty nail had been hammered right through the hands and the feet, and the blood flowed out of the wounds like a waterfall. The feet were a mangled mess of broken, disjointed toes, blood, and toenails that had been ripped off. But, the body was so flayed, and cut apart, that I could have counted the number of exposed bones.
I looked on stunned, holding back with everything I could the great urge to puke from the sight. So great was the disgust, so intense was the gruesomeness and the nature of the grotesque body, that, even though I desired to turn away, I found that I could not.
There was silence, with only the sound of the drops of blood on the golden floor in the sapphire shadowy light. Then, in a voice that slightly lower and quieter, a grim whisper, I heard the chilling voices of the Guardians in unison first in what sounded like Hebrew, then, a repetition of the same words in English so that I could understand:
תראה את הגופה שבורה בשבילך
הנה הדם נשפך עבורך”
“Behold the Body Broken for You,
Behold the Blood Poured out for You.”
I didn’t fully understand the words, but a feeling came over me, a sense of chilling and baleful poetic beauty spoken from the grim voices of the guardians. It was then, at that moment, that the pale, disfigured and bloody heap of a body did something very peculiar and bewildering.
With his arm that hung dislocated at his side, with great struggle and effort, and pain on his face, he slowly raised out his arm, and, with a badly bleeding palm, he extended his hand to me in a gesture of receiving.
His face winced in pain as he held his dislocated arm out to me. I stood there, absolutely stunned and floored, simply staring at the hand offered out to me. I took an unknown amount of time simply staring in wonder at bleeding hole in his hand. I was unsure of what to do, or even what to say. I gripped the sword tightly in my hand, and, even as I gripped, my consciousness was made aware of the sword. Just as before, I heard the voice of Jordo in my memory,
I'm not sure how to comment. I appreciate your depiction of the horrors of the body, of existence in the material. These contraptions we use -- all the sinew and bone, the muscles and organs -- horrify us with their ultimate fragility and transience. It is very obviously much easier to vandalize and destroy than to create and grow. To face this version of horror does indeed take tremendous strength and courage, which you illustrate well here.
The horrors of the suffering of Christ's torture and execution are still material horrors, obviously. That's why your final line resonates, because beyond that there is an Ultimate Horror that must still be faced, the ultimate test of courage and of Being.
I just read Daniel’s latest a few days ago, and as soon as I began your latest Mark, it was like musical notes were being melded together from what you both wrote in my mind. I hear the beginning of a symphonic tone poem taking root. It’s something that isn’t altogether comfortable to me, as a few of the notes sound discordant to my ears, but I know it’s good to broaden my understanding of my world view from a different perspective. I look forward to the pathways of the rest of journey. Thank you both.
"If you believe in God, then you necessarily believe He could also kill you. Strike you dead, at the drop of a dime. And not just you. A entire galaxy could vanish tomorrow, sending astronomers into fits of gibbering madness. That’s the meaning of Alpha and Omega: unbounded will and power."
"It is, and always has been, a psyop, designed to convince you that you are also nothing more than a programmable machine."
I wonder if this is why AI seems to be so heavily geared towards replacing human artistic attempts. A robot that can scrub toilets is useful, but a robot that writes our books for us? There's something psychological there.
The way I phrase it at this moment is that the programmers want to convince us that the highest human aspiration is to endlessly scroll upon one's phone.
Haven't read this yet but your comment on Keeping the Wolf away made me have to share this song with ya Mark, some of the best guitar I've ever heard at the end:
Glad you liked it brother, it really is a great song, video they did for it is great as well. Once you become a father you start to understand the true meaning of Keeping the Wolves Away.
I'm very much looking forward to part 2 and however much is in the rest of the series, as I'm already reeling from this feature-length teaser intro.
Do me a favor and please keep your head on a swivel until this series is done. It has the feeling of something that becomes "left" unfinished under mysterious circumstances. I'm fairly certain I could not abide that.
Apologies for commenting before I finished the article, but I had to pause for a moment and get this out:
I think you're right, they do seem afraid this time. Not offended, not feigning outrage, *terrified*.
But I don't think it's violence or exposure they're afraid of. They know how to deal with violence. They've been doing that for ages. Identifying, infiltrating, dismantling, or redirecting it to their own ends. And they know how to deal with exposure: squirt a cloud of ink, flash some bright lights and loud sounds in the periphery, and scurry away in the confusion. The 15-minute average attention span of domesticated consumers and near non-existent long term memory guarantees a critical mass of people will always be ready to accept the new narrative once it coalesces.
It's laughter they're afraid of. I know it's a cliche in the meme wars, but I've been thinking about it a lot lately and like a lot of memes, it has a kernel of truth. It's not that some of us will now know what they were up to. For all intents and purposes we already did. We just have the receipts now, and as mentioned, the receipts don't matter.
It's that we can see how *tawdry*, how *incompetent*, how obvious and pathetic and pointless and stupid it all is. We see that they're not the masters of the universe, that they're not brilliant Machiavellian schemers, that there's no big elaborate plan. We see that they're just idiots and losers and petty grifters. They were succeeding merely because nobody lifted a finger to stop them, because everyone who could have was just as debased and stupid as they were. And we're *laughing* at them for it, and they *hate* that.
Because the greatest sin of this particular brand of demon is pride. They hang their pride on the walls in the form of shiny certificates and endless titles. They parade it around at prestigious events, access to which is proof of their superiority. They swell with it when they get away with crimes that the rest of us would be imprisoned for. It drips from every condescending word they speak. And now we're laughing.
Monsters fear artists because we hold a mirror to them and show them what they are, and because we help others see them for what they are. But these monsters aren't terrifying horrors from the cosmic abyss. They're diseased, disfigured, degenerate, pathetic, disgusting, sub-human, the worst and lowest of us. They're Dorian Gray as seen in portrait, and we're *laughing at them*. We're taking their pride away.
By the tens and hundreds and thousands they're being humiliated and scattered to the winds, and the ones that haven't been sent off to the unemployment lines are afraid that they're next, and they know they have nothing whatsoever of any use to offer now that their grifts are over and their sinecures are rescinded. They're going to be pumping our gas and picking our strawberries and learning to smile and say "would you like fries with that," or else they're going to starve.
That's what they fear. And it feels great to see the fear in their eyes.
"It's laughter they're afraid of. I know it's a cliche in the meme wars, but I've been thinking about it a lot lately and like a lot of memes, it has a kernel of truth."
Yes. It burns like fire in their ears.
I agree with the rest of this too. The Picture of Dorian Gray was something I was actually writing about in a future chapter of this. That's also in the "Don't Look!" category. Because what happens when you actually look? That can only end one way or the other.
Glad to see you back! I'm slowly savouring... :)
Just stopped for a moment to say that this:
"George Orwell also undelivered on his curriculum, issuing only the monster’s warning without the hero’s answer."
...is the best one sentence summary of the plot of 1984 that I have seen.
** goes back to read **
Thanks, Scotlyn. It's always been something that bothered me about his stories. "Animal Farm" is another fine example of it. That's not to say they don't have value. We can still build the other 9/10ths of that bridge.
The trap Winston Smith fell into by nursing his secret hatred of the party, was to be misled into thinking that fighting AGAINST what you HATE can lead to the good.
There are several prongs to this trap.
1) What you contemplate you imitate. Keep your steady focus on what you hate, you will soon become more and more like it.
2) Fighting against what you hate almost necessarily brings about the splitting of means from ends, the actual from the ideal - ie the temptation to use evil means (now) because the imaginary good ends (later) will be worth it. All actual ends flow from the actual means used to attain them, it cannot be otherwise, intentions notwithstanding.
3) To be full of hate is to be hateful - which gets built into a sense of self. Hatefulness becomes its own perpetuator. You end up keeping what you hate locked in place so that you can keep on hating it, forever and ever with no end.
It is ironic, then, that the way out of this trap - which is ALWAYS open to EVERY ONE of us - to fight FOR what you LOVE - was also tripmined and made especially treacherous for Winston, via the "Ministry of Love's" re-education process which (reportedly) taught him to "love" Big Brother.
A very perverse inversion of love! And, as you say, a tale that is all monster's warning, and no hero's answer.
Anyway, the rest of this post was a good read, and now I'm on tenterhooks for the next one. :)
Alright, finished now. And as always, a banger. I think I might have some idea of where you're going with this, but I'll hold thoughts on it until you get the rest out.
Oh and something I should add to my other comment: to be clear, I don't think the imps we're seeing right now are the end of it. I've just seen them for what they were for a long time. Pride is a sin I'm very personally familiar with and it's easy to spot it in others. Takes one to know one.
But imps are administrative servants, not masters, by design. And I don't think we're going to find the ultimate master embodied in some Klaus Shwab / George Soros style villain. Those are just more imps, of the same general variety. You've already done a lot to highlight several of the other varieties. It's not over until we find the thing that makes them and destroy it, and I don't think we get to do that here in "Dimension X."
Yeah. It seems to me there's a very long chain-of-command involved. I figure most of the minds who inhabit it are pretty dimwitted, and some are probably totally oblivious to the Big Dumb Plan. "Imps" is a good way to put it, even if we're referring to agents that are (physically) human. "Stooges" works too. Nyuk Nyuk Nyuk!
I don't have a comment at the moment. But Eugene Terekhen's latest seems on point.
https://open.substack.com/pub/eugeneterekhin/p/elves-evil-and-enframing-tolkien?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=1mko6
It does lead me to ask: where will love fit in to your story? Will it relate to the Glory in the title?
Sorry, brother. I can't give any spoilers.
Shoot. And i didn't even ask about [redacted].
[Redacted]
I'm curious as to the chapter in the gospels you're referring to. I think i know but I don't want to spoil it. But just maybe it's in Saint John's gospel?
Hey Mark, so nice to finally get you back!
And for leaving us all with the cliff hanger at the end!
Just two thoughts if I may.
1. A perspective on Christ and grotesque realism.
2. A small section from my book I am close to completing (for anyone interested.)
Now, with regards to one.
A particular strain of literary theme and form that was of particular interest in the medieval period was grotesque realism (see Mikail Bahktin's Rabelais). Although the theme is interpreted as an over emphasis on gore and disgust, the genre can also be interpreted as the inversion of normative categories. For example, associating beauty with goodness is inverted by associating goodness with the ugly (an example of this inversion was Shrek, whereas orgres are normally evil and dangerous, Shrek was sensitive and "layered" with goodness within). In addition to inversion, good grotesque realism captures Lovecraftian fear and horror within itself to showcase Otherness and the wonder of mystery.
There is a certain beauty within fear that can be as captivating as beauty. For example, the Uruk Hai in Peter Jackson's LOTR movies are, although evil, very cool. Their black armour, tiny slits across the eyes of their helms, and screeching teeth hide their deformed and grotesque natures within their armour, which adds to their terror and threat. Plus, they look cool!
Now, to get to my point. As a pastor wisely taught me long ago, if you Fear God, you will fear nothing else in comparison. You taught that so well in this essay. In our highly effeminate culture especially, the masculine urge to respect those with greater or higher power has been diminished by over compassion and empathy for the Other. Christ has been made to appear soft, weak, and feminine (Jesus meek and mild!) to cater to our feminine modern capabilities.
But the real Jesus, the real God of Gods, was not like that. And, as I am trying to capture in my own book (and reaching my point finally), in Christ we see the perfect summation of fear, horror, beauty, love, wonder, and mystery not only in one person, but in one particular event, which was the cross.
At the cross, the horror, barbarism, and grotesqueness of the scene would be too much for modern sensibilities. On the cross, Jesus was 100 percent naked (no loin cloth like in the movies), He had chunks of beard and flesh ripped from his face, his entire back muscles and flesh would have been stripped away from the flogging, and the beating would have been too much to watch. And the agony of the cross itself.
It is the inversion of power from a worldly perspective, and the victory of ugliness. But, those with wisdom (1 Cor 1), see beyond the horror to see the truth and beauty of the event. And, more than that, the absolute horror and terror that would be involved in the event.
Because, as we read, as the people and Pharisees jeered at him, all of a sudden the earth quaked violently. Although it was midday, the sun went dark. Blackness came upon the earth.
The crowd and Pharisees stopped jeering and fled in terror as reality dawned on them.
F#$%
This is not an ordinary person. This is something bigger than us, something more elemental at play, a great power and mystery beyond human capacity. How friggin insanely frightening that moment was for the whole earth when Christ died (as the historian Thallus wrote about as well).
I can't even imagine. The only comparable event that we have in recent memory was the solar eclipse of last year. It was, for a moment, a small realization that humans are very small, the universe very big, we are not in control, and death comes for us all. And Christ is king over all these things. It is terrifying, and not good news if you're not covered by his blood. It's too much terror to even comprehend, but more relieving than words to be saved, and protected by the very one who would be your worst enemy.
2. For anyone interested, here is a scene from the book I am close to completing. This will be long, so I included it in the reply, rather than the comments. For anyone who cares, enjoy!
It was silent with a dark suspense.
And, with suddenness and great dread, I could feel something standing in the darkness right in front of me. As I felt the presence of something in front of me. The flickering light of the candle in the Inner Court burst into a small flame once more, revealing a small orange and yellow light that mixed with the blue sapphire ice of the inner court, just like the first time I came into the temple. (MIMIC your first encounter here with your heart). A shadowy blue light fell over the temple in the midst of the dark cloud. I looked out directly.
Before me there was a man, smaller in size or stature than myself. The man wore a heavy, pitch-black cloak that covered him from the head, all the way to his hidden feet. The cloak was heavily tattered, and ragged. The cloak looked very, very, old. The hood of the cloak covered the man’s head.
I stared looking at the cloaked figure, and the cloaked figure in black stared back at me.
It was silent as the two of us stood staring at one another in the outer court; the only sound was the flickering candle light and odd crack of the flame.
As I looked out upon the cloaked figure right in front of me, I felt, just like I did for the first time I saw him out in the lake at the beginning, a great feeling of dread and horror of fear. The hairs stood up on the back of my neck, a chill went down my spine, and goosebumps went uncomfortable down my arms.
It was an encounter with something Other, something uncontrollable or explainable beyond myself.
My terror was the salute that mortal flesh gives to immortal things.
Every intuition inside of me began to rage in fear, every biological urge to flee struck with the power of millions of years of ingrained natural instinct as the power of fear raged within me.
Suddenly, from the depths of my heart, as if being spoken to, I heard from the inside of my broken heart the sound of a voice I remembered with deep and sincere clarity. From something inside of my heart, I heard the voice of Lucifer:
“Flee!
Do not trust or believe this man!
Flee, PJ!
This Man is dangerous!
Flee!”
I turned to flee in complete fear as the Cloaked Figure stood motionless. But, even as I turned to flee, I grasped the hilt of the sword in my hand, and I remembered the words that Jordo spoke to me,
“When the fear of the Captain comes upon you, you must master your fear, stand your ground with courage and bravery. Do not flee.”
I smiled at the memory of his words. And, even as I smiled, I felt a shimmer of light from the sword go out into my bloodstream, filling me with a small spark of courage. The voice of Lou went quiet inside me, and I stood my ground. I put my shoulders back with confidence, and squared my legs wide with balance, ready to face the One before me.
As I squared my legs, and put my shoulders back, the Cloaked Figure in front of me nodded his head, as if recognizing and inclining itself to my smallest ounce of courage. The light of the flame within the Inner Court sparked a little brighter. And then, one more time, I heard the memory of the voice of my friend Jordo within myself:
“You will see the Captain in His true form.”
What did that mean, ‘I would see the Captain in His true form?’ I was not sure what that meant. A moment passed, and I stood before the Cloaked Figure. However, despite my uncertainty, and unsure of what would happen next, I nodded my head back to the Cloaked figure.
Receiving my invitation, the head of the Cloaked Figure fell to its chest, and it exhaled, almost painfully and sadly, as if the revelation and preparation of the moment would be costly. I was surprised at the reaction, because the head falling to the chest was a sign of great weakness; a sign I did not expect from a creature so powerful, terrifying, and dark. The man behind the cloak, almost as if sensing the moment, raised his head from his chest to look at me one more time, and then, with a small twitch, the black cloak fell to the floor. The mystery was revealed, and before me was the form of the figure now fully exposed.
Nothing in all of the world could have prepared me for what I saw.
Before me, there was a naked man. Except, the flesh of the man was so flayed, so grotesque, so gruesome, disturbed, disfigured, bloody, broken, and marred it hardly resembled human. I was so appalled at the sight of him, the body so marred beyond human likeness, his appearance so hauntingly hideous in its injury and disfiguration, the body so mangled, so hideously broken, so gruesome and grotesque it could only be described as pure horror. I fell to the ground on my knees, the sword dropping helplessly from my grip clanging to the floor as I clutched my face with a great scream of horror and disgust as I began to retch at the sight and the stench of a body so ripped and torn apart.
Upon the head, there was a cruel crown of sharp black thorns piercing into the skull of the cranium which was crusted over with deep scars of flayed blood around the puncture holes in the skin. Around the crown of blood-encrusted thorns there was long brown hair. However, the hair was wild and stripped, and was covered in green mucus and stinky snot that dripped to the floor as if he had been spit on innumerable times. However, although some parts of the hair were long, there were long chunks of hair that looked like they had been completely ripped out to the core by many hands pulling on the follicles. So deep were the rips of the chunks of his hair I could see bare, yellow skull at the roots of the cranium. His face was drenched in blood, and one of his eyes was out of its sockets, attached by a stringy red flesh dangling by his cheek; it seemed as if it had been beat so bad it had come clean out. The eye was dead and gaunt, white with the haunt of stinking flesh that was blind and could no longer see. The other eye was deep purple and black, the ultimate bruised eye, punched to a pulp, almost closed with laceration and bruising, with barely a slit open to see a brown eye behind the swelling. The nose had a wide, deep gash across it that would take hundreds of stitches to fix together. The ear on the right side was extremely ugly, and cauliflowered with a gross bubble of foaming puss; the other ear was torn clean off, revealing a gaping hole, as if from the same clutching hands that ripped out his hair. Most of his teeth had been knocked clean out from heavy punches, only a few jagged edges of yellow teeth were evidenced. The tongue hung up attached to the top of the mouth, sealed with cracked and torn lips of exhaustion, water deprivation, and thirst.
Deep gashes were across his cheeks, and his beard, like the hair, was long, but ripped out in many places as if torn out by clutching hands. The beard was ripped so hard in places that I could see the stretches of open ligaments and chunks of yellowy ligament and the red blood of exposed jaw bone. The top lip was badly cut with a severe laceration, and half of the bottom lip was hanging clean off from the face. It would not be inaccurate to say his head more resembled a skull than anything human.
Most curiously and disgustingly, the head and face was smeared in a brown and black goo amongst the blood from which the heavy smell of feces and vinegar was protruding so badly I had to plug my nose. Stuck in the feces on his face were little chips of what looked like a yellowy-white sponge, as if a sea sponge covered in human feces and vinegar was thrust and smeared into his face.
The body of the man was as badly beaten as the head and face. He had powerful shoulders, strong arms, and large hands. He looked like he had the strong body of an experienced blue-collar worker, like a welder or a carpenter, with a slight dad-bod complexion and roundish belly; he was not jacked or cut like the body of Lou from earlier. His body was strong, but quite plain; and utterly destroyed and torn to shreds. There was a gaping wide deep and heavy gash right across his chest, as if a sharp dagger were brought across it slowly. The skin from the cut was flayed open like a fish, revealing the gross flubby white colour of human fat near the exposed muscle. The shoulders and abdomen were slashed and flayed so badly the bare bones of the body were revealed in gaping wounds in front of me. It looked like the body had been whipped and flayed by leather straps attached to knives. The shoulders of both arms were completely disfigured and badly dislocated, sticking out in opposite directions that were completely abnormal to normal human anatomy. One arm hung loosely at his side dislocated, the other was stuck awkwardly across his body; the arms had been wrenched out of their sockets as if pulled badly left and right at improper angles.
The legs, like the body, were a complete mess of tarnished muscle and severe and bleeding lacerations. The right quad, from the top of the hip to the knee cap, as if peeled down like a banana peel, was ripped at the top and folded down from the top to the bottom of the knee cap, where it withered hideously in the open air barely attached to a few sinews at the knee. The inner fibula bone was exposed, surrounded by unattached sinews, ligaments, and tendons. The left was sliced up like a butcher’s shop. The legs were caved inwards and awkwardly turned in, wrenched inwards against their nature. The Achilles tendons of both calves were snapped and noticeably curled up inside the skin, as if they had popped from overuse and exhaustion at an improper angle. Around the mid section, quite horribly, the phallus and exposed reproductive organs appeared to be pulverized and squashed, as if given special attention in the beating by a large hammer as a symbol of male weakness, infertility, and the failure of a dead soldier.
However, despite the gruesome and grotesque imagery, there were two things that I noticed most about the broken body before me. On the side of his abdomen, just at the ribs, there was a massive and gaping wide hole from which heavy amounts of blood and water were flowing, as if a spear had been thrust into the flesh, piecing the man. The puncture and wound was so severe the guts, and intestines of the inner body were draping out like dangling rope, almost touching the ground.
Lastly, on both the feet, and the hands, there were two scarred and crusted gaping wide holes that were punctured clean through to the other side. It was if a heavy, rusty nail had been hammered right through the hands and the feet, and the blood flowed out of the wounds like a waterfall. The feet were a mangled mess of broken, disjointed toes, blood, and toenails that had been ripped off. But, the body was so flayed, and cut apart, that I could have counted the number of exposed bones.
I looked on stunned, holding back with everything I could the great urge to puke from the sight. So great was the disgust, so intense was the gruesomeness and the nature of the grotesque body, that, even though I desired to turn away, I found that I could not.
There was silence, with only the sound of the drops of blood on the golden floor in the sapphire shadowy light. Then, in a voice that slightly lower and quieter, a grim whisper, I heard the chilling voices of the Guardians in unison first in what sounded like Hebrew, then, a repetition of the same words in English so that I could understand:
תראה את הגופה שבורה בשבילך
הנה הדם נשפך עבורך”
“Behold the Body Broken for You,
Behold the Blood Poured out for You.”
I didn’t fully understand the words, but a feeling came over me, a sense of chilling and baleful poetic beauty spoken from the grim voices of the guardians. It was then, at that moment, that the pale, disfigured and bloody heap of a body did something very peculiar and bewildering.
With his arm that hung dislocated at his side, with great struggle and effort, and pain on his face, he slowly raised out his arm, and, with a badly bleeding palm, he extended his hand to me in a gesture of receiving.
His face winced in pain as he held his dislocated arm out to me. I stood there, absolutely stunned and floored, simply staring at the hand offered out to me. I took an unknown amount of time simply staring in wonder at bleeding hole in his hand. I was unsure of what to do, or even what to say. I gripped the sword tightly in my hand, and, even as I gripped, my consciousness was made aware of the sword. Just as before, I heard the voice of Jordo in my memory,
“You must give your heart.”
Thank you for sharing this, PJ.
I'm not sure how to comment. I appreciate your depiction of the horrors of the body, of existence in the material. These contraptions we use -- all the sinew and bone, the muscles and organs -- horrify us with their ultimate fragility and transience. It is very obviously much easier to vandalize and destroy than to create and grow. To face this version of horror does indeed take tremendous strength and courage, which you illustrate well here.
The horrors of the suffering of Christ's torture and execution are still material horrors, obviously. That's why your final line resonates, because beyond that there is an Ultimate Horror that must still be faced, the ultimate test of courage and of Being.
Really great post! The pen truly is mightier than the sword when it's wielded by a real artist like you! Looking forward to this series!
Thank you, brother. It's interesting how (as usual) we seem to be writing about such similar stuff, in such a short window of time.
It really is. There's definitely something being broadcast in the ether for those with ears to hear.
I just read Daniel’s latest a few days ago, and as soon as I began your latest Mark, it was like musical notes were being melded together from what you both wrote in my mind. I hear the beginning of a symphonic tone poem taking root. It’s something that isn’t altogether comfortable to me, as a few of the notes sound discordant to my ears, but I know it’s good to broaden my understanding of my world view from a different perspective. I look forward to the pathways of the rest of journey. Thank you both.
"If you believe in God, then you necessarily believe He could also kill you. Strike you dead, at the drop of a dime. And not just you. A entire galaxy could vanish tomorrow, sending astronomers into fits of gibbering madness. That’s the meaning of Alpha and Omega: unbounded will and power."
Heh. The man said it best, said it first:
"He's not a *tame* Lion."
"Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. But he's good. He's the King, I tell you.''
"It is, and always has been, a psyop, designed to convince you that you are also nothing more than a programmable machine."
I wonder if this is why AI seems to be so heavily geared towards replacing human artistic attempts. A robot that can scrub toilets is useful, but a robot that writes our books for us? There's something psychological there.
The way I phrase it at this moment is that the programmers want to convince us that the highest human aspiration is to endlessly scroll upon one's phone.
So good to have you back.
Thank you, sir.
Haven't read this yet but your comment on Keeping the Wolf away made me have to share this song with ya Mark, some of the best guitar I've ever heard at the end:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYdvxBxHX2U&pp=ygUha2VlcCB0aGUgd29sdmVzIGF3YXkgdW5jbGUgbHVjaXVz
Great stuff, Rev. Great lyrics, too.
Glad you liked it brother, it really is a great song, video they did for it is great as well. Once you become a father you start to understand the true meaning of Keeping the Wolves Away.
Wow...
I'm very much looking forward to part 2 and however much is in the rest of the series, as I'm already reeling from this feature-length teaser intro.
Do me a favor and please keep your head on a swivel until this series is done. It has the feeling of something that becomes "left" unfinished under mysterious circumstances. I'm fairly certain I could not abide that.
Like 80's GI JOE, my head is on a perpetual swivel. and I ship with the Kung Fu grip.
Thanks, brother. God bless.
A very thoughtful and thought provoking read. Definitely looking forward to reading part two!
Thank you, Matthew. I will do my best to get it out in the next few days.
Wow, this was a rush! Brilliant work, proper scholarly thinking and writing.
Thank you very much, Douglas.
Excellent essay. That was worth the wait.
Thank you, brother John. Sorry it took so long.
This is a journey of mind expansion. Thank you for this rare gift you have given us.
I know I thanked you for your restack, but thanks again for the encouragement. And you're welcome!
My pleasure.