As I picture this thing, it would be useful for you to picture millions–perhaps billions–of demons flying around in the night, creating tension. That is all they need to do: create tension. We do the rest. Posit a given, inherently stable system. Add sufficient tension, and it will careen out of control eventually, as we are.
Does not our world seemingly exist, in the main, to make us tense? Does it even matter where you stand on the political spectrum? Does it even matter if you are involved in politics at all? All you need to do is watch TV. And who do you know who is neither involved in politics nor watches TV? I can’t think of anyone I personally know. They must exist. You don’t know them, though, because they are off the cultural grid. And likely lonely, because they are “weird”.
What I feel is that the demonic represents the inner side of us, the dark side. There is nothing particularly interesting about this observation. But before I got distracted, I was in a dark place where I could see the inner realities of everyone. Imagine a world where you ONLY interact with people as they truly are, where you see what they have not processed yet, where you see what REALLY animates them, where they cannot lie to you about who they are.
Seriously, imagine that. Would that not be scary as shit? It is little wonder I am a bit–perhaps more than a bit, although my social skills are fine, when I’m putting on my social face–of a lone wolf. I have reached a point in my work where I can seemingly live with my work, where I can make processing my pain and separation from God a primary focus. I have the energy and resolve. This is good.
I will admit that I cried, listening to “The Agony and the Ecstacy”, when Father Bichiellini died, because I have never had a friend or mentor like that. I think so many of us, in this world, are crying for want of wisdom, for want of someone we can trust, who is wise and good and kind in equal portions. TV, our culture, our lifestyle, makes “wisdom” the trait successful entrepreneurs have, not successful human being. I have learned, regretfully, to mistrust nearly everyone in the self help industry. I do retain a fondness for Zig Ziglar. I do suppose he cheered me up at times, the way a true mentor would. He was old school and hokey, but for all that, I think he was sincere. Don’t ever dump on Zig in my presence.
And one last thing, before I move to my work. I watch people, conforming to their expectations of how they are supposed to be, separated from their own guts, their own hearts, their own minds, their own will, floating. This is not different in principle from what ants do. Ants operate according to programs with which they are born. They can no more decide what they are going to do than can a complete conformist, confronted with evolving social realities.
The point of life is to be DIFFERENT from animals, not the same. It is not the details of the conformity which bothers me, but the fact of it. It is no better to be a conformist conservative than Leftists, but the practical difference is that being a Leftists asks much, much more of you: it asks for your soul, by changing the terms of the engagement continually, by asking more and more and more and more, until there is nothing left but self righteousness, and the propensity for chanting in the pews, in affirmation of your “identity”.
And the so-called Singularity, if it ever comes (and it will come in parts, in dribs and drabs, and indeed is already arriving, but the mind is not the self, so it cannot come fully), will merely emphasize not the most human aspects of our lives, but the most primitive, most ant and cricket-like. We might have instantaneous access to the whole of human knowledge, but will still be chirping. We will know the Thus-ness of everything, but the texture and the why of nothing. There is no spirit in machines. They are neither friend nor enemy. A supercomputer and the first pulley are not different in principle, if they serve truly human aims. But are we human?
Increasingly, no. We are rats in a maze, looking for food pellets of human warmth, companionship, and love. And there are countless demons absolutely willing to keep us company, at the cost of everything we are.
My work continues. I am of course quite willing both to give my life for this work, and to dedicate my life to this work. I don’t want to die for what I do, but I believe I am on this Earth to fight, and fight is what I intend to do until my dying breath.