Run Down the West

The decadent west has been described as a "vampire" by some critics, sucking children dry of blood. Blood is a life sustaining fluid, and to be robbed of it is to be dead or dying. Here, the west is said to be depriving children of their essential life elements--typically understood as the catchall term for modern affluence. The west stresses individualistic egotism, instant gratification, progress and persuasion over such mundane things as wisdom, guidance, kindness, charity, and patience. Indeed, in the west people seem to be fighting to retain these virtues on a personal scale in an environment that does nothing but encourage the opposite.

Children grow up in this environment, and learn quickly the world does the opposite of what it teaches. The so-called character in their "character education" is actually forged in a fight. It is caught between coming and going, between doing what is right and doing what the market and the media encourage, between valuing humility and respect and climbing to the top of an artificial social edifice to spit in the face of those who lost out. In truth though, virtue is just as important to sustaining an individual as blood. If to be robbed of blood results in a poor health and death, then to be robbed of personality by culture is to be in a state of comatose where one's will is no longer in control of the body just barely kept alive by the external system. Children need individuality like they need blood or air, otherwise they are living a life of a slow drown in the depths of illusion (aka. what the mystics call maya).

However illusion-based the west is though, it is also a free world, and the "big bad media" is simply an organization of individuals producing a product by utilizing that free will. Censorship of the content of the media, or managing culture, should be no entity's sole discretion. The culture simply "is" and nothing can be done about it. It is an engine fueled by a collective perspective shared by hundreds of millions of people, it is not inherently evil or even wrong, it's just ubiquitous and persuasive and limits our resolve to resist it (and therefore utilize our own individual will against it). The only solution to tempering the pervasiveness and destructiveness of western affluence on the minds of younger generations is through direct love and guidance of an adult who is himself also a victim of that "vampire" of affluence. It can hardly be argued that the CL is anything but.

Unlike other sources of guidance who may be entrenched in the will of society, or even be benefactors of the system (such as social workers), the CL is an independent agent. Through their outside charity, their love and guidance, a child is able to truly prosper as an individual. The CL is able to teach children about the grip of the west, to understand what makes it so powerful over human life, and ultimately how to respect that human life more than any product, social system, idea, or even society itself. They learn through their interactions with the non-parent how to swear allegiance to no artificial pillar of culture and only swear allegiance to themselves, how to be self reliant, how to be a person and not a puppet. When a child is given that kind of deep appreciation for life, theirs and others', by observing the works of the person who loves them of their free will, then they grow so much more protective of life. They'd see material things to be temporary pleasures that add to life, and not life itself.

In doing so, the vampire, the Babylon dragon, is rendered tame.