As many of you know, I visited North Carolina this past July to visit my family. It was a fun trip, and I enjoyed catching up with my family after having been away for over 3 years.
I’m glad I went, because it turned out to be the last time I’d get to see my Nanny, my paternal grandmother. She passed away a couple of months later.
Anyway, I’ve been playing around with Animoto, an online slideshow tool. Here’s a slideshow of my trip:
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We often refer to the generation of the 1960’s as the “Me” generation. However, if you look at the current generation, we may be looking at a group more ego-centric than we’ve ever seen. From increases in Narcissistic Personality Disorder to the recent development of the concept of the “Truman Show” Syndrome, personalities in our society are totally out of whack.
Whereas in the old days, only true experts had a voice in shaping public opinion, nowadays everyone has a voice, everyone can become an overnight celebrity, and everyone can build enough hype around themselves to develop a following in their particular field of expertise (even if they aren’t really experts, as is often seen in the field of search engine optimization and social media optimization).
What results are over-inflated egos, built up and reinforced by people who blindly follow anyone who acts like they have it together, and a collective of self-concepts that are destined either for failure or for leaving a succession of destroyed relationships in their wake (usually both).
If you’ve never read The Book of Enoch and you have some spare time, I would recommend it. I think it provides a great insight on how the ancients thought the world’s troubles came into being.
The Book of Enoch is a noncanonical book that expands on the story in Genesis 6:2-4, in which the “sons of God” (presumably the Watcher angels sent to guard over mankind) fall in love with the “daughters of men,” interbreed with them, and give birth to a race called the Grigori (or giants).
There was an undisclosed number of angels that made up this group of Watchers, and they were led by 18 chiefs. Each angel was assigned a task for teaching men the secret knowledge of God, from predicting the weather and mixing herbs to reading the stars and divination. Once their offspring, the Grigori, began reeking havoc on the earth, God sent his archangels to kill them and capture the Watchers for punishment.
Now, what I find interesting is that most of the angels were punished by being chained beneath the earth for 70 generations … all but one — Azazel. To Azazel was ascribed the whole crime, and, as a result, the following punishment was meted out:
“…Bind Azazyel hand and foot; cast him into darkness; and opening the desert which is in Dudael, cast him in there. Throw upon him hurled and pointed stones, covering him with darkness; There shall he remain for ever; cover his face that he may not see the light. And in the great day of judgment let him be cast into the fire.” (Book of Enoch, Chapter X, 6-9)
What could Azazel have done to receive the worst of all of the punishments given out? Was he a chief among the Watchers? No. Did he kill anyone? No. What he did was teach the following arts:
Azazyel taught men to make swords, knives shields, breastplates, the fabrication of mirrors, and the workmanship of bracelets and ornaments, the use of paint, the beautifying of the eyebrows, the use of stones of every valuable and select kind, and of all sorts of dyes, so that the world became altered.” (Book of Enock, VIII, 1)
In other words, he taught men how to make war and how to be vain. War left the Earth stained with blood, and vanity left behind souls addicted to dalliance.
I always found it interesting that the author of the Book of Enoch thought that war and vanity were equally despicable sins against humanity and that they were worse than sorcery, astrology, and alchemy.
Is vanity really as destructive as war? I know I’ve seen my share of relationships destroyed by narcissism, however, even I have a bit of a challenge connecting the subversive negative impact of self-absorption with the overt devastation of war. Maybe the impact is a progressive and long-term decay of community and trust. It does seem to build with each successive generation. A 2006 study of Generation Y found that two-thirds of college students who took the Narcissistic Personality Inventory evaluation had above average scores, according to researchers at San Diego State University.
Nowadays, Web 2.0 allows anyone with a video camera, a mic, and an Internet connection to build up the misguided idea that the world revolves around them. They can have their own show on uStream.tv or post videos of their random monologues on YouTube.com without having to prove their knowledge or back up their claims with experience. These tools offer the possibility of instant fame and a means by which their underdeveloped psyches can fill some deep need, unmet by their coddling parents’ love and the foolish education system that focuses way too much on building self-esteem rather than teaching the basics.
Technology allows us to reinforce the bullshit marketing message of “it’s all about you” by giving us a ready-made audience, filled with enough people who don’t have the discernment or guts to call someone out for being a fraud. If someone is snarky or witty enough, it’s assumed that they must be right.
Over time, when enough famous morons speak in unison, no matter how wrong they are, what they say is considered truth. Perhaps this is how vanity can be as destructive as war. War devastates our infrastructure and destroys our bodies. Vanity corrupts our minds and destroys Wisdom.
“Choose my instruction instead of silver, knowledge rather than gold, for wisdom [Sophia] is more precious than rubies, and nothing you desire can compare with her.” The Call of Sophia, Proverbs 8:10-11
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Additional reading:
Lam, Andrew. “Too much self-esteem spoils your child.” San Francisco Chronicle. July 15, 2007.
Davidson, Gustav. A Dictionary of Angels, including the fallen angels. The Free Press. New York, NY. 1967.
The Book of Enoch, the Prophet. Wizards Bookshelf. San Diego, CA. 1995.
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I know I said I wouldn’t make the focus of KeithGoode.com religious discussion, but I saw something in the news this weekend that I wanted to comment on. As part of the launch of their new television channel, NET, the Catholic dioceses has invoked an old adversary to help them promote it. “Satan” appears in their commercial asking his minions to go to StopGoodTV.com and help keep people watching unholy television programming.
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I have been watching with great interest the supposed reincarnation of the Buddha in 18-year-old Ram Bahadur Bomjan. Supposedly, he has been meditating with little or no food or water for 6 years; once spending 6 months under a tree in southern Nepal.
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It has been about, oh, 11 months since I last updated this blog. Life has a way of either getting in the way or offering better options for using my time.
I have been blogging some, under a nom de guerre, on Google’s Blogger platform. I mainly post items there that are of a religious/spiritual nature. Few people don’t know that I’m a Gnostic practitioner, but I still don’t wish to offend someone over something as precious to them as their personal beliefs. I always want people to question their beliefs, so they can understand why they believe what they believe, but I, unlike Bill Maher, don’t wish to offend them in the process.
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As the New Year begins, it’s a good time to reflect on the past year and see if there are things I’ve learned that I can apply to my life in the days, months, and years to come. The tradition of the ethical will (Heb. “Zevaoth“) comes to us from Jewish moralists, who wished to pass on their collected wisdom to their children and/or students, meaning it was meant for a very small audience. It was also meant to be the ultimate expression of the individual, passed on to those who remained after death. I’d like to take that tradition into the modern age and make it something that we can all share, but I think it’s also important to reflect annually on the year and figure out what was learned along the path in those 12 months.
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I saw this comic strip today and thought it was worth sharing. Click on the image to see a larger version of it.
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The news came out today that Dan Fogelberg died this morning after a long battle with cancer. His album (yes, it was vinyl) “The Innocent Age” was one of my favorite albums growing up. Once my mom left to go to work, I’d spend hours listening to it as loud as I could on her turntable console. I memorized the lines of all of the songs, and I could probably still sing them even though it’s been years since I heard any of them.
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This week, on October 15th, the blogosphere celebrated Blog Action Day, a day on which hundreds of bloggers wrote about a specific topic. This year’s topic, not surprisingly, was the environment. In response to this day of collective yapping, I’m holding my own blogging event. Only, I’m the only participant, and I won’t delude myself into thinking that by talking (or writing) about something I’m going to change anything.
Now, before you starting thinking that I’m an evil anti-environmentalist, let me make a couple of statements. First of all, I do believe that we all must individually begin making better choices. We’re the only creatures on earth that befoul their own living environment … and continue to do so after the negative impacts are realized. Secondly, I love Nature. I love being in Nature. There is an awesome feeling being in a pristine location, with no man-made structures in sight. I can totally relate to animist religions, like Shinto, that revere natural locations as sacred, such as mountains, waterfall, streams, forests, etc.
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Thoughts are the rudders for our lives. When they are jumbled, the rudder spins in all directions, and the ship becomes lost or doesn’t move at all. When thoughts are positive and full of confidence, the rudder makes its adjustments as necessary, but no sea of trouble can throw the ship off-course. And when thoughts are depressed, it seems the ship has run aground and the rudder is mired down in the sandbars of life. Such are my thoughts right now.
I’ll be 36 next month, so I suppose I’m at the mid-life point of my life. The men of my family don’t live for very long after 60, and I have enough negative health markers to where I shouldn’t expect a long life. A heart attack took my father, paternal grandfather and maternal grandmother; cancer took my mother; and diabetes took my uncle. I’m single, overweight, and sedentary. In the game of life, I’m rolling snake eyes. Frankly, if I live past 40, I’ll be surprised.
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