Good Morning Digitial Neighbors! Happy Monday ADD Irregulars, WSN Aficionados, Friends & Refugees at the Report, PHAM & Misfits of Phetasy and all the rest of your Conversants, Lurkers, Seekers and Lost.
Today's morning prayer was the classic battle of David vs Goliath. I think this classic moment known to believers and unbelievers alike speaks to both the lighter and darker part of humanity. On the light side we love stories of underdogs overcoming a greater and apparently more powerful evils. Some of my favorite stories, movies and videos are people who picked the wrong fight and got their ass handed to them. I don't care for the trend of calling fellow adults bullies when the behavior we are describing is just intimidation. I don't like people who menace, intimidate or threaten others. I suspect most of us don't, so when we see them getting put in their place it is a satisfying experience. Goliath shit talks the Israelites and he head literally handed to him after brought down to level by a simple sling stone.
The darker side of this story appeals to the envious side of human nature where we take joy in seeing people fail or suffer. It is with good reason that the first two stories of the Bible deal with pride, envy and anger. Pride screws the pooch of paradise and then envy and anger leads to the first murder between siblings. For too long the Enemedia (remember those self-appointed "Betters" ) fashioned themselves as the "David"s of society taking on all the Goliaths out there. They never cared that over time, in the last fifty years or so, they morphed into Goliath and made themselves the watchdogs of the Establishment. They constantly promote envy and division. I am still pissed about the Ferguson experiment that the media ran at the expense of that community and future planning for the Summer of Floyd (George - not Pink). The marketing of envy is a major industry and perhaps it always has been, but we sell dissatisfaction, resentment and entitlement to those who see themselves as less. These perceived Lessers find some sort of joy in seeing people fall and fail. If you or I find joy in seeing people fail and fall I can't help but think we are just dicks. It is judgment call after all, I do enjoy seeing puffed up people humbled, I do enjoy seeing intimidators picking the wrong fight and getting their comeuppance. But I do not enjoy seeing people fail or humiliated for the sake of entertainment.
I was never really a fan of America's Funniest Videos back in the day because too much of that humor was humor as the expense of others. Sure, one accidental hit in the testicules is funny, but week after week and nut-busting humor and people falling, running into things, or otherwise getting injured was not funny to me. At little is funny, too much not so much. I'll confess that the problem is mine, I know people I appreciate that enjoyed that show back in the day. Beauty and humor is in the eye of the beholder. Well, enough rambling my friends, Happy Monday!!!
Today marks the three hundred and thirtieth birthday of the Frenchman François-Marie Arouet, better known by his nom de plume, Voltaire (1694-1778).
Born into a bourgeois family during the reign of Louis XIV, the “Sun King” (r. 1643-1715), Voltaire suffered tragedy at a young age when his mother died. Never close with his father or brother, Voltaire exhibited a rebellious attitude toward authority from his youth. His brilliant mind was fostered in the care of the Society of Jesus, who introduced him to the joys of literature and theater. Despite his later criticisms against the Church, Voltaire, throughout his life, fondly recalled his dedicated Jesuit teachers.
Although he spent time as a civil servant in the French embassy to the Hague, Voltaire’s main love was writing—an endeavor where he excelled in various genres, including poetry, which led to his appointment as the royal court poet for King Louis XV. Widely recognized as one of the greatest French writers, and even hyperbolically referred to by ...
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XIII
The Proud Minister
One day there came into the Garden a man in torn clothes badly bruised and cut, who said to the Lover, “In the name of the Beloved I demand your help.”
So the Lover and the Disciple let him in and dressed his wounds and prepared the best of the vegetables from the Garden for him to eat. When his wounds had been dressed and he had eaten and rested the Lover asked him how he had fallen into this plight, to which the man replied, “I was Minister of the Beloved in a city near this place, where I preached His gospel and expounded His doctrine to the people. I pointed out to them how their sins had made them wholly hateful to the Beloved and how therefore they were utterly beyond the range of His love and He would condemn them to eternal torments, whereon some fell into despair and wept bitterly but many were angry. One day the magistrates called me before them and begged me to leave the city and preach elsewhere for they said I had made many people so angry and desperate that they feared there might be a riot and they might not be able to protect me but that I might suffer some injury. I, however, very zealous for the Beloved and believing that the magistrates only feared that their own sins might be proclaimed, preached the more vehemently, denounced the magistrates and made it abundantly clear that the whole wicked city was foredoomed to eternal punishment by the just provision of the Beloved. Whereon a mob, stirred up no doubt by the corrupt and venal magistrates, fell upon me with sticks and stones, nearly killing me and driving me out of the city in the state in which I came to you.”
“My friend,” said the Lover, “this was not a good deed of yours, for besides denying the unfathomable compassion of the Beloved, you have by your obstinacy caused these people to commit a grievous sin, and this cannot be pleasing to the Beloved, that through you who profess to be His minister the people should become worse. Surely you remember that He Himself said, ‘If they persecute you in one city flee to another.’”
Therefore the man was very angry, and cursing the Lover, said, “I see that I have had a very false report of you and I do not believe that you are a servant of the Beloved at all. When I came to you so injured for the Beloved’s sake you set before me only herbs and fruits although the garden is full of birds which you could have killed to make me a worthy meal. I shall proclaim everywhere that you are no true servant of the Beloved but a mere falterer who dares not suffer in the cause of the Beloved. Be sure that you are foreordained to eternal torments who suffer nothing here.”
For the man was so blinded by his own pride that he could not perceive the scars on the hands and feet and the brows of the Lover nor how the cloth beneath the armpits of his tunic was dyed with a red dye. So he went out of the Garden cursing and shouting.
But the Lover looked sad and said, “A man like this does much harm to the cause of the Beloved, for by thus speaking falsely about the Beloved he may bring men to fear Him but none to love Him, and by love alone can any man approach the Beloved.”
