On Words And Concepts

(Building on a recent blog in these pages)

I can remember clearly to this day - some seventy years later.  My, how time flies - the precise words which I opened an essay with (er: ‘with which I opened an essay’) in my 11th grade English class (and obviously wrote trying out some new words in my vocabulary; which we were encouraged in that class to develop, to the point of keeping a notebook of new words that came our way, and how they had been used):

“Down through the eternal ages Man has been witness to one internecine carnage after another…’” 

Two comments at this point.  No. 1: Not to let him off the hook: I didn’t actually mean as a ‘witness,’ rather as s causative agent.  And no. 2: Hyperbole (and youthful inexperience) aside, I find it interesting that even then I didn’t buy the idea of The Fall, looked at life simply for what it was: an experience.  To clarify: I don’t recall from my Sunday School lessons ever being taught that Man was a Fallen Sinner, and it was simply ’in his nature’ to do such things.  I certainly never felt that way about life, and my life in it.  My uncomprehending and disgusted position spoke rather of my basic, unspoken feeling that I was an Innocent, who grew up wondering why the people around me were acting the way they were, in their interminable squabblings.

Years later I came across a story by a science fiction writer titled ’Stranger In A Strange Land’.  That was it, precisely: my feeling.

To continue.  In my essay I went on to list a lugubrious litany of wars ‘down through the eternal ages,’ wondering aloud, as it were, what could be the cause of this behavior, and its ongoing expression, and ended my essay on War on a morose note, thusly:

“It has become part of the Nature of Man.”    

I don’t recall that I had been taught anything about evolution by then - not even in my 8th grade General Science class (which I aced) - or I might well have referred in my essay to the idea - the ‘idea,’ you will note - of ’survival of the fittest,’ would have referred to it as the reason for such appalling behavior on the part of Man; and accepted that as an answer about Life, and moved on, with that awareness.  But even when I did come across the idea - the ‘idea’ - of evolution, something in me didn’t buy it. 

It didn’t ring true for me.  To me.  Or for me.

In short: I never felt either ‘fallen’ - i.e, the Christian concept - or ‘descended from apes’ - the ‘scientific’/atheistic concept. 

Something wasn’t computing for me, in either camp.

And i encourage you to feel that way, too  To say: to question our roots.  Discerningly.

Buying into either of those ‘ideas’ about our origins may help answer some questions about life.  But neither speaks to our essential essence.  As ‘spiritual beings having a human experience’.  An expression - an ‘idea’ - that did ring true for me, when I came across it many years later.  (From the writings of Catholic priest & anthropologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.)  

To clarify: I will accept that part of our makeup is from a mammalian descent, an animalistic nature as a higher primate.  But we have our nature from higher up on the Tree of Life as well.  And it is that part of us - to say, beyond even just our Human envelope(1) - that is speaking to us; ever calling us Home - and so loudly now, too, these days.  To live up to our higher Selves.  Not down further into our lower selves.   Before we perish from our mistaken self-identity, that has allowed us to identify with that lower part of our selves; to our detriment.  

To our lesson learning.  But overall, to our detriment.

To say:

It’s time - and Time - to grow

Up.

Our higher Selves are speaking to us - calling us - more and more loudly.  These

Latter Days.

Also to be thought of as well as these

Ladder Days.

Giving us a Way out of the mess that we have made of our nest.

And speaking of; and by way of the bottom line to this essay:

It is my observation that many - too many - people think of themselves very much like ants; and as members of armies of ants, given naturally to fighting with each other.(2)  Blacks, browns, whites, yellows.  Americans, Germans, Russians, Chinese.  Democrats, Republicans.  LGBTs, straights.  Yes, there are those differences between us.  And the differences serve various educational purposes.  But you - you there - have a soul.  And thus, you are a prospective god.

Live up to it; to that potential in 

You.  

And yes, we may have a rebellious streak in some of us, that causes us to want to go our own way in life, rather than that of our Creator Source.  But our intrinsic nature is as a child of a loving Parent.  Whose Home it is open to us all to return.

The wiser for the experience.

Hopefully.

    

—

footnotes:

(1) I have referred in these pages just recently to the understanding of Zecharia Sitchin, researcher par excellence who taught himself how to read Sumerian script in order to learn about their take on our origins, that their ‘gods’ - a race of beings built on our template - were responsible for a splicing of DNA from this planet’s hominids with theirs, to make workers for them.  

   And toilers we have been ever since.  And about to rise above those beginnings.  But to continue.      

(2) And including deliberate provocations between them orchestrated by their Erstwhile Masters, in order to Divide and Conquer them.  Looking down on them - thought of - as just that sort of creature to them.  

   Or as cattle.