Hostage of Dolour

I had a comment on my Into Kotaom Youtube channel; an atheist mantra, if you will: “Religion will fall!” And while I’d wholly support such a revolutionary shibboleth because Man as an animal would be unshackled and at liberty to finally achieve the potential of humanity, I do sadly doubt that this will occur any time soon. If ever.

Again, while I unreservedly support the dissolution of orthodox religion the world over, this would of course present certain widespread and panoramic difficulties.

Imagine that, by some revolution, the constructs of our religions were dismantled in some wholesale action. However, because our laws rest in an inextricable bondage to our religions almost irrespective of which nation we inhabit, these too would firstly be disengaged from the tenets which they uphold and which uphold them. Were the dismantling of the religious orthodoxy on some scientific grounds for example, there could be no justification for the indexing of any human acts as either “good” or “bad”. Beyond religion, every human act would be simply unindexed. It would be an act of human nature. We would, in effect be bound [and I use the term loosely] by one abiding law only: the law of Man; the law of human nature wherein everything is permissable, similar to the tenets of Thelema: Do as thou wilt.

Of course in the ensuing murderous animalistic chaos, many would perish. Production would cease, ownership of any possession [even life itself] would become a dangerous occupation. Plainly this is not a path that we should voluntarily seek, is it? We would certainly find ourselves, initially at least, dropped into an existence of pure chaos. Yet, to make a point, how dissimilar is this from the oppressive pious affectations of many of our current religious nations? Were we freed of our religions and our interdependent judicial markers and concomitant corrections, the ensuing pure chaos would take us back to a correspondingly pure neo-Darwinian era. Barbaric, some would say. Yet at least we would gain a new fundamental level of human integrity, and [in my view] eventually a parity with each other. Contrast that with the capricious domination that is both permitted and applauded in many zealously religious nations whereby an individual can be castigated, killed even for missing a religious protocol, or worse, on the whim of almost any sufficiently fervent religion-backed adherent. Currently in fact, many of our most indoctrinated religious nations shelter the most abyssmal animalistic chaos. At least if we were dropped headfirst into the neo-Darwinian, de-religionised version of chaos, we would be at liberty to stake our own claim by our wit and will and by our own merit alone and not because of our incorrect interpretation of some anachronistic fictional texts.

Naturally though, neither situation is preferable. So I’d agree on principle with the Youtube comment, “Religion will fall!” yet with a caveat: “Dismantlers, be certain you can survive the fallout.”

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.