Original

 

Orphism (Simultanism) / Robert Delaunay/ Tall Portuguese Woman

I have been trying to figure out why things appear to be so fucked up lately.  I realize that the superficial reasons are legion.  Environmental degradation, climate change due to fossil fuel use and abuse, overpopulation, corporate and individual greed.  Man, the list goes on.

But, when you look at it, those things are symptoms.  They aren’t diseases.

I could be glib and say that the reason that we are fucked up is that being fucked up is the human condition.  Kinda hard to argue that.  But that kinda leads me back home to sitting in my third grade catechism class and having the priest and the nun earnestly explain to me the concept of original sin.  

Look, I don’t really buy into the snake and apple nonsense (and all the inaccuracies contained in that little quip), but the concept of original sin and the subsequent imperfectability of man kinda leads you down the path to thinking that there may be something to this least appealing of the judeo-christian myths.

Now, last time I looked, the idea of man as a sinner makes more sense than not.  It is a not-very-palatable myth in today’s world of progress, optimism, and perfectibility.  But it may very well describe mankind’s condition better.  Looking out at the world, I think that I have to say that even the great mass of pretty good folks out there are incapable of seeing their behavior as being sin.  

Now, here is where folks will stop peeling away from me.  I am a sinner too.  In today’s world, if you have sin on your unwashed hands, folks seem to think that you can’t mention the fact that sin exists.  But all that serves as is a means of shutting people up when they notice that you are a sinner too.  Because the biggest myth of all is that an individual is capable of perfection and isn't at their core a greedy, self-centered, irrational, and imperfect being.  Even worse than that, the individual seems to be incapable of perfection.  

Simply put, we are kind of a fucked up animal, with too big a brain, and too small a social nature.  We kinda got way out of control and we are way into overshoot and getting ready to pay some dues.  Now, you will probably think that this is some kind of Jeremiad, but if it is, it is a pretty non-judgemental sort.  

Mostly we are in the hubris leading to the nemesis stage of the process.  We simply thought that we were more than we were, we took more than we should, and we will have to work our way through a pretty serious decline.  

I think that what is needed in this stage of the game is a little species-level humility.  But that is gonna need a little bit of slapping around to get started.