Hostage of Dolour

Why do we hallow and attach significance to objects that are inherently worthless? Were I in Berlin, 9th of November, 1989, would I not have claimed a chunk of rock from the Wall; a piece of history, and then encased it in a cabinet when I returned home? Would Michael Jackson have passed on an LA street before my eyes, would I have resisted claiming a note that fell from his pocket or his black hat or scarf as paramedics lifted him into some waiting ambulance? Yet would I pick up a stone from my garden and thus revere it? Would I pilfer the toppled trilby or balaclava of the homeless man and applaud myself for “owning a piece of him”? Why do we attach such significance to inherently worthless items. Such as our holy texts, our holy prophets, our gods, man-confected notions all?

I’d not fault anyone for carting off a chunk of the Berlin Wall; an innocent pastime perhaps. Yet to indulge the whims of religion is plainly a self-limiting, self-belittling concept for anyone.

The reality is that each of us is great in our individual ways. Yet we are bound not only by the incorrect notions of “good” and “bad”, but also by the urge to achieve religious standards which are wholly incompatible with being human, mortal, error-prone, selfish, greedy, jealous, lazy – all these things are inherently animal; human. So why do we measure ourself against other standards that do not become us?

I say, don’t measure yourself against the arbitrary standards of your religion, nor strive to attain those absurd standards, for they fall far outside the nature of humanity – Man is an animal, never forget! And you’ll likewise fall far short of those standards. You’ll “fail” by your religion – a state all religions were designed to achieve in their adherents. And it’s a state that leaves you with only the one choice: to crawl, begging mercy of the nearest holy contrivance, whether that be Jesus, Allah or some more mundane earthly interceder.

I say Man is indeed great, though he wanders lame with the animal in him repressed. Man is god! And though all variant religion reminds you of your shortcomings, you are great nonetheless. You are declared great by the natural standards of the Animal of Man. You need attach no significance to books that are of no more worth than today’s bestseller Dan Brown fiction. You need attach no significance to doctrines that assist you in your life no more than the notion of “how great is this hat, let me worship thee.” There is no need to debase yourself before worthless texts, icons, objects or under religious doctrines that are incompatible with the true Animal of Man that each of us is. You need no other metric for your own greatness except your humanity.

Quite simply, religion is a control mechanism which Man wields over himself. I think this has been quite horribly illustrated here in Ireland by the exposing of numbers of the Catholic clergy, both male and female, as abusers. Most recently, a lady here, treated with sadistic malicious and sexual contempt by those priests that undertook to raise her as a faithful, respectful and decent child, has received monetary recompense by the Catholic church.

For me, this raises a number of points. I think this is quite the most insidious form of domination whereby the priest or nun believes they are an embodiment of the requirement to suppress sin and the sinners responsible – to say nothing of the hypocritical methods employed therein! I think this abuse is simply the hushed, but logical extension of the cane of religion in its widest remit.

While I believe this abuse is meted by second-person abusers [those priests, nuns, teachers, we've heard also of elder abuse by care workers, infant abuse by nursery workers] I also believe there are as many third-person abusers too. In the case of this lady, she brought the truth of the horror to her own mother who told her [to paraphrase] not to be silly, that priests didn’t engage in such activity. And I guess at the time of these abuses, information wasn’t so freely available, yet the prevailing attitude was the same then as it is now: “Be quiet about it!” or “You’ll bring shame on all of us including yourself!” thereby impelling the conspiracy of silence within the Catholic church.

Without wanting to in any way, gloss over the horrors of these incidents, there’s another odd point to all this. And on the one hand I get it, yet on the other, I find it worrying – that victims settle for monetary compensation. In the case of this lady, she felt that the monetary recompense was in some way equivalent to an apology, yet it was neither an apology nor was it a punishment of any kind. The Catholic church is renowned as being particularly wealthy. A visit to St. Peter’s Basilica wil confirm that for any of you that have been. Therefore it’s far cheaper for the church to buy a silence than it is to shoulder the uncountable cost of an unequivocal admission of culpability and an unreserved apology.

On the other side of this argument – or perhaps it’s two sides of the same coin, while none of us would refuse money being offered to us, especially a “substantial five figure sum” at the same time, isn’t this at the cost of the integrity of the victim? I worry that there’s an underlying subtext to accepting a compensation which has been cold-bloodedly calculated as being “sufficient” by the Catholic church’s litigation professionals. I think that subtext is still, and will always remain, “Be quiet about it!” and “You’ll bring shame on all of us, including yourself!”

And so ultimately again we see the enactment of control over our fellow man by those who would abuse the power of an already abusive institution: orthodox religion. I think the indoctrination, not just in the faithful adherents of each religion, but in faithful non-attenders and society in general, is so great that we reconcile these hideous acts of abuse as being perpetrated by [and I despise the term] a “minority”. I say if Man accepted his own greatness and was able to realise his [or her] own untapped strength, there’d be no requirement for religion as a vehicle of societal control. If we realised our own powers; if we understood the notions of the Animal of Man and Man as god, we’d have a parity with each other that would be untreadable by the boots of control and indoctrination. When that day came, we’d finally apprehend freedom.

A young man here took his own life by hanging himself from a road bridge.  These days unfortunately that’s too common a tragedy to merit much attention further than the relatives and friends left behind in the wake of sorrow and questioning and self-analysis, though awareness is relentlessly being raised by laudable and noble local campaigners as well as myriad others working tirelessly on the national level.  But the story now is that of one of the local newspapers publishing a picture of the suicide scene before the body had been lifted down from the underside of the bridge.  There has been significant condemnation of the editorial decision to do so.  The point I want to draw from this is that many of us – even those of us repulsed not only by the audacity of the paper, but of the gruesomeness of the image – would seek it out to satisfy some unwritten curiosity of the morbid.  I think there is a voyeuristic enclave residing in each of us which may be piqued by such incidents.

I had an odd incident many years ago when travelling home from school with a friend on the bus.  Initially [and quite deliberately] paying no mind to a clutch of elderly ladies venting their horror and affectations of concern at passing a well-viewed, blue-lit road traffic accident, my own curiosity coerced a quick turn of the head… A blue Transit van, overturned, a little brown 80s hatchback accordianed like a Coke can.. my dad’s car.  Ambulances.  Hang on… My dad’s car?  Holy sh**!

I think there’s a part of us that in some way needs these incidents [provided we're not directly involved or impacted].  For me, the sight of my dad as a spectacle filled me, and still does fill me, with horror.  How much more for the poor family of the young man that ended his own life to have his image broadcast around the country?  But still, for the rest of the world, we want to know.  We want to see, or at least that noisome little voyeurist within us wants to see. 

And so, my point in all this is that I see these rather unpleasant-to-confront tendencies in each of us as being symptomatic of a certain repression; a repression of our true animal natures.  I think each of us carries within us, the “Animal of Man“, if you will.  But this entity is almost wholly constrained within us, were it not so, society would be chaotic and unmanagable.  Nonetheless, through our various controls, be they religion, law, moral and ethical codes, we are a suppressed race.  This is the essence of what I mean by being the “Hostage of Dolour“.  Humanity is suppressed and while I think these trifling voyeuristic traits are one of the many negative aspects of repressing the Animal of Man, I do believe there are an equal number of positive traits that we’ve not nearly begun to explore.