Superficial Rejuvenation

Who needs the attainment of wisdom at the foot of one's mortality when we have rejuvenation cosmetics? Where once we had faith, now we have so-called rationality, and while one produced simple humility in its adherents, the other produces little but vanity. Mankind no longer goes gently into that dark night, but instead spends the rest of it actively fighting the natural aging process. If life is all there is to this body and soul, it behooves the holder to hold it as long as possible--regardless of whether it's natural or healthy to do so. Where once the aging were encouraged to feel humbled before the infinite, we now have a population vainly empowered by the shorter number days they have left (thus making everything a "limited time offer").

Civilization shirked off this deference to a charismatic authority hell-bent to improve the soul and character of mankind, and in its place, built the establishment of consumerism to cater to their psychological defects instead. Is that the end of the saga? Hundreds of years of rationalism so that we can now have superficiality and vanity in the place of integrity? So that we can have anti-aging lotions, wrinkle creams, and "hair removal" regimen? It's as if we have nothing better to do with the remaining 50 years of our lives than try to make ourselves look like we did in the first two decades. When eternal deference was cut off to the heavens above, it seems like human beings then had no problem turning the same so-called "blissful ignorance of reality" onto themselves instead.

Most children are encouraged to do little else more universally than "get bigger" or "grow up." For children, aging is a prime directive, and the older and more mature one is, the more that simple status is regarded with coveted dignity. As soon as a "child" passes the threshold of adulthood though, all that anticipated growing has come to its final and premature peak, and society expects the young person to then look out on the road ahead and see nothing but a repulsive downward trajectory. How quick are we to really experience life when we are either stuck in an upward current or in a downward spiral? One way or the other, we're made to feel destined to a particular fate, with no acknowledgment of our life in the present--the "right now."

Imagine feeling as though you're on the death bed at the age of 21. Such is how we seem to expect our 21-year-olds to feel. On the contrary though is everyone over that age, who is then expected to want to be that age the rest of their lives! There is no period of human life that our culture has reserved for us to revel in the fact of being a whole individual at one place and time, without either "needing to be older" or "needing to be younger." Being whole is not as profitable as needing a hole patched. The perversity of it is revealed through close observation of nearly all commercial media surrounding anti-aging products, and nearly all products in general to a greater or lesser extent. I say perversity because this is a perversity, forged by Babylon itself, and is no less disgusting to my tastes than any other form of perversity.

Reality dictates that we all grow, decay, and eventually die, and yet only the most rational of the so-called later-day rationalists would accept this to be true. They'd rather bust out all their science to fabricate products to profit off the widespread lack of fulfillment that infects so many a person over thirty these days. Most seem to think or have been bred to believe that wasting one's good time is preferable to using it toward constructive ends, but only because nothing profitable for someone else has ever had anything to do with a consumer being constructive. And since those idolized "first 20 years" are the same years that the average human being exists simply to make money for other people, it's no wonder why that same individual would then want a refund after that time has passed and has gained them little. It is all too easy to "grow up" lacking fulfillment only to "live" a mature life in continuous want of a refund.

That "refund" is another way of saying "rejuvenation." Where once the passage into adulthood meant something to the primitive roots of culture, now it is simply the age at which a youth realizes for the first time that he or she has been gypped for the first 15 or so years of life. It is no matter though, for God willing, there is another 50 years left to waste trying to earn back the time that was lost during their so-called "good years." Who needs to be "born again" in the so-called eternal spirit when superficiality and artificiality accomplish the same trick for twenty-seconds at twice the price?

Culture Wars

If it is wrong to use God to justify human conflict, war, discrimination, and other malice, then why is it acceptable to use children to do the same? Is it because children are living entities and are thus seen as more deserving of being the impetus for malice? Surely the effects of conflict on their behalf are more tangible for them than the ones wracked up on God's behalf. That is to say, if we launch our culture wars to save the world for children, is it more justifiable because, unlike God, they exist in the physical world and could thus reap the benefits of a war in the physical world? Does that make sense?

It is reasonable to contend that a war for God's behalf is actually more justifiable than malice carried out for the children's behalf, and it's precisely because children are living entities and God is beyond life. Human shortsightedness allows us to foresee victory when we believe our culture wars are righteous, but what it fails to do is allow us to foresee the inevitable consequences that a culture war brings to the very real and physical entities it was waged to protect. God feels no harm when our holy wars and malice launched in his name inevitably end in human ruin, but children do. Therefore, because the effects of a culture war are more physically present even on those it was waged to protect, the children, it is arguably less justifiable than holy war.

This point though is more about equivocation than pairing one unjustifiable thing against another unjustifiable thing. There can not be an acceptable justification for malice, conflict, war, and discrimination, whether it is carried out for the children, God, or even world peace.

The Mysterious Stranger

Lucifer the angel was cast out of heaven for possessing the properties of God: omniscience, omnipresence, omnipotence, and a property he thought equal to God's omni-benevolence--its opposite, omni-malevolence. The Satan of Twain's "Mysterious Stranger" appears to us in a physical representation, a young Satan (nephew to the biblical Satan) who is able to court three boys. In dealing with their lives, he displays his power to know all things by telling of foreboding doom, displays his power to do all things by responding to their pleas to avoid it, and just as well displays his destructiveness in averting it only by killing them one by one. Satan's perspective still persists, because it'd be hard to refute that his actions are wrong without resorting to mere preference. You disagree with him out of preference toward good, rather than any quantifiable reason.

That is to say, there is nothing strange or abnormal about Satan's approach, particularly in his way of mystifying children--it all seems to make sense on the surface, and because it seems to make sense, it has to come in the guise of a stranger just so people may begin to treat it as hazardous. Had it come in the guise of a parent, then it would have gone unnoticed. Modern society has turned the face of Satan on everyone who would spend even the most nurturing and wholesome time with children only because it puts its trust over its children solely in the recognizable face. The unrecognized face may as well be Satan's nephew all over again.

But the question inevitably remains, are we really all so different? So too have the child molesters been cast out for possessing all the characteristics of those we'd put trust in: those who would lie to children, those who would treat them with less than human dignity, those who would exploit them for personal gain, those who would justify their abuse--all save for the one quality that separates the trusted from the untrusted:  a recognizable face. We tend to think an evil that looks familiar is more wholesome than an evil that is strange to us. Child molestation is strange to us because we can't figure out who could be so evil as to sexually exploit a child, when at the same time, exploiting children for financial gain seems right at home with us.

In the fear that someone might accidentally harm our children, we have let a physical manifestation of Satan go off his chain. He has convinced us of foreboding doom, and we have begged at his side so that he might release us from the grip of destiny, and he has responded in his own way.

The short of it is, we repeat this narrative because we wish to see evil put in its place, and yet only succeed in giving it further legitimacy. By repeatedly flashing the killer's face on the news for dramatic effect, we build him up to the status of folk hero in the eyes of those who are society's equals in ability and opposites in moral compass. By thinking we can solve child sex abuse by pushing all that which is strange to us off to some island in the pacific ocean, we succeed in being ruled by the mysterious stranger among us--ruled by the terrorists we're trying to eradicate. By banishing Lucifer to hell, God gave him legitimacy in knowledge that good will necessarily triumph over evil. We are not gods though, so we are in no position to make that assumption when we do likewise.

Thought-Stopping Cliches

Our typical human overhears the cultural media pulpit repetitively spouting thought-stopping cliches about predators day in and out, takes them at face value and then perhaps turns around and criticizes those who practice religion. There is no difference. If religion is said to become anxious at the idea of critical analysis and receives criticism for it, then our media pulpit should be spared no less the same. The only thing that is necessary to say to render null all arguments for justifying our opinions based on reason alone is wrapped up in the confused media-fed jargon of the expression, "predators targeting innocent children." No one can contest paranoia like this without looking like they support the "predators," so it becomes truth regardless of its truth.

"The language of the totalist environment is characterized by the thought-terminating cliché. The most far-reaching and complex of human problems are compressed into brief, highly reductive, definitive-sounding phrases, easily memorized and easily expressed. These become the start and finish of any ideological analysis."
(Lifton, Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism 429)

Childhood innocence is a cultural designation for which there is no evidence--sure children exist inside a different developmental stage from adults, but there is no reason to believe they are any more "innocent," "pure," or "angelic" as a result than your average adult given their own developmental state. Another is the purely cultural detestation for "pedophilia," where ignorance has produced in the mainstream its 1 to 1 correlation with "child molestation." Such a 1 to 1 correlation has no evidence, and even runs counter to evidence suggesting that not all pedophiles necessarily commit the crimes of child molestation and possession of child porn. But put these two words together in the same sentence, "innocent child" and "pedophile," and all analysis stops. If you contest the jargon, you're in support of the perpetrator. In the past, such an ability to think beyond the words would doom your soul to hellfire, these days, it dooms our society to ignorance and illusion servitude.

Sweet By and By

For all that is made about the "insufferable" childishness of children, adults can be quite childish themselves. At least it is appropriate for a child to act childish, according to the adult perspective, but in reality, the same should be true for adults. Because what is childishness? It is the inappropriate actions of a child who has not grown snug into the customs of his or her surroundings limited by the circumstance. In short words, it's the temper tantrum when they can't get what they want, the egotism, the pre-conventional understanding of morality. Essentially, it is the expression of a developmental mindset at odds with the requirements of the universe it finds itself in. This is true of kids, but it is also true of human beings.

Could it be said that any adult has worn the universe so snug around them that they haven't acted like just another sentient ape running around, throwing tantrums and basking in self importance on this spec of dust in the limitless chaos? Of course not. Human beings are not gods, but because they are not gods, are these inappropriate actions then, given the circumstance they find themselves in? If we can determine a child's childishness, how do we determine what is appropriate for humankind in the grand scheme of the cosmos if all we are is human beings?

If religion and spirituality does anything, it renders the adult mind as they would prefer to keep a child's, it's the only thing stopping an adult from assigning even more self-importance to themselves than they already do. It forces them to look out at the world with the same humility and subservience that they expect and demand from their offspring. It reminds them of how truly childish they are, as they sit around on earth gloating about their so-called importance just for being adults. Perhaps Christ himself was onto something:

Verily I say unto you, Except ye turn, and become as little children, ye shall in no wise enter into the kingdom of heaven.

When we speak of childishness, what we're really talking about is the overly expressive human ego. It doesn't stop expressing itself simply because a child has matured into adulthood, instead, even as the adult becomes more aware of it, it comes to define civilization. Materialism is a concept for people who are not easily swayed by the humility that religion imposes and spirituality inspires, those who want to believe that because they are in the "full maturation of their faculties" that they are gods themselves, and the material culture of western civilization feeds into and is a product of that egotistical belief. These are the people who believe the full maturation of their faculties means there can be nothing higher or more transcendental than the narrow adult human, animal, five-senses, culture-specific, planet Earth perspective they have. Given the massive scope of "existence" itself, there is nothing more childish than that.

What is childish is human. In the grand continuum that is human nature, there are many shades. Adult is just one variety. It is no more or less important than any other. It should command no more or less authority over the universe than any other because it has no more authority over it than any other. It can't. Just like all the other varieties, it is too self-absorbed.