and a New Beginning?

Life, the world, everything ... is complicated. And there is no real way, actually, to "uncomplicate" it - except in one rather simple way. In essence it comes down to "calming" the source of these complications. There is however no "extinguishing" it.

Last week I've had school. And our religion teacher is of the opinion that it's a lot better to not dwell on his own, or any one singular religion, but to just use the occasion to talk about all sorts of stuff. Some time ago we had a brief excourse into hinduism; And last week we've had a brief excouse into buddhism. With that on mind - and other things I beheld there, in school and elsewhere - I'm once again humbled. And that certainly also factors into me saying that life is complicated.
In this context, the thing is that I had no idea what Nirvana was all about. And so, regardless of how much I think or believe to understand - I'm well aware of the fact that it's at best just a temporary impression.

Nirvana ... then ... I would argue is born from the desire to uncomplicate things. TO move on into a fantasmal beyond in which ... things just are somehow, perhaps magically, at peace. And ... I also just had a brief look into the Frenzied Flame ending in Elden Ring - and there are striking similarities. The entire concept of cyclical rebirth in aspirations of one day entering Nirvana ... has something ... to itself that is as a rejection of life.

In Buddhism then, that would be part of their fundamental truths. The first one: Life is Suffering.


Life is Suffering, they say. Greed brings Suffering. The rejection of Greed rejects Suffering. And I forgot how it goes on. But I'm certainly not alone in recognizing that there's an error there. Seemingly so. For, when rejecting greed to the point that suffering is eradicated; Then either life itself is to end; Or Life itself isn't entirely the same as Suffering. And thus - at best - only the suffering by Greed is being eradicated.

More so than suffering however, is life complicated. It must be so. Life, in its essence, is ... in Gnostic terms the most fundamental "thing" there is. It is existence itself. It is 'one' whole - and yet it must contain all that there is. Also all that was and all that will ever be.
Life itself so grew to recognize itself - and that self-perception spawned reason. Cognition. Cognition born from the infinite - and as such, but an infinitessimal fraction of the whole. While prior to that we may say Existence has been in darkness, the expression of its own existence yet merely reflects upon one aspect of "it all". Sure, the most pivotal one - the only one available at the time. As so: Infinity will always be some way removed from any amount of things existent. Realized or only Considered.
As from the "I" eventually came a "You" - "theirs" from "ours", "others" from "ourselves" and all that - 'distinction' is inevitable. And with distinction comes growth. With growth comes understanding. But in the vastness of infinity; What we can understand ... gets complicated.


Life - incarnate - is thereby effectively bound into infinite growth. To forevermore evolve. To forevermore perceive, consider and reconsider. To forevermore rationalize its own self within the vastness of the cosmos.


Not to say that it has to constantly reinvent itself. In actuality ... it cannot ... at all ... reinvent itself. For life, as it is, just is. And that's what it'll ever be!

We may at times get into this weird state of mind ... I certainly do so ever so often ... where all of life seems to boil down to the one or the other concept. And then it's all about that one thing; And whatever can be done for or against it. And while we certainly can't help it - it's still a bit of an error in that we miss the bigger picture.
Being reminded of it may even make us sick. Sickly so. Fed up ... with how life might be just in about anything but the one thing we want it to be. But the bigger picture isn't that life is about things other than what it may be about to you - but that life is full of things, including these hopes and aspirations, and whether or not a thing comes to pass is entirely irrelevent for time's evergoing flow.


And so, to boil life - or what we may care about within it - down to 'suffering' only, that too is a bit ... narrow-minded.

I generally don't like the topic either; For ... most of time ... the suffering of people is merely a stick with which people chose to beat down on people that may or may not be "too optimistic" about the future. Especially when it comes to matters of God and religion. How long can we talk about God, before we must suffer the inevitable reminders that there's suffering in this world? And yet, who can claim to be doing anything about it?

As it so stands, God is blamed for its existence. Yet, in one or more ways, we can clearly see that we're pretty much capable of inflicting it upon ourselves. And yet people would refuse to even consider God's existence for as long as not all suffering has been ended. And in so doing, they also reject all of their own responsibility - waiting angrily for God to make a move.

Or ... so it would seem.


An economic Parable

Recently it has occurred to me, that there's something off about Inflation. Well, Inflation is due to money, and money is due to scarcity. In a world with finite resources it seems to be very much inevitable. Inflation there being a value that roughly reflects the value of something in relationship to its availability. And availability here also relates to population size; But also economic output. "How much of a thing can be made available" - and what kind of compensation those that make it available get for it and what that again means to the rest. So is economy.
In its simplest sense described as a current. Hence: Currency!?
Money however also exceeds this purpose. Rather than being a measurement of the current, it IS the current. Rather than measuring things by economic value - it enables flow control. That certainly is the most primitive way to even 'have' a current - but so do come various forms of greed. Greed however isn't entirely grounded in the material world. Greed is a lot more ... universal than that.

Greed, I'd say, is a derivative of Ego. Wealth by money within a money-driven economy 'enables Ego' - where Greed is an expression of Ego that is inconsiderate of others. Skimming the "Gnostic writings" (the Nag Hammadi Codex), there's a lot to that effect written in the subtext. Ever so often an entity comes to say: "I am God, there is no other than me!" - to be met with a rebuttal "Thou errest, Samael (Samael means God of Blindness)".
We've had a similar story with Ariel. And sure - an entity that does at first exist within its own consciousness is thereby effectively "Godlike" - as one's self is practically God within one's self. I mean ... what God's ego is within existence, is our own ego within our self. And the pivotal mistake that Samael makes, is to assume that there is nothing but themself.

So is Greed akin to Lust - or a form thereof - as a thing that effectively seeks self-realization before, above and/or in-spite of others.
For, were I to think myself a God or a Ruler; And pursued it with Greed - assuming that I had the material means to do so, I would grow to impart my will - my sensitivities and what not upon the rest. I would see my right to acquire what I want before the right of others; Or in an established Monarchy I would expect to have that privilege. And while to a King of any decently wealthy nation scarcity is probably not really a problem; That is certainly relative to one's ambitions. The moment I can think of more than that which is, I can see shortcomings.
And once that becomes a souvereigns mode of operations, we call that Megalomania.

We may thereby certainly say, that Capitalism isn't strictly good or bad. It depends on those that act therein, for sure. But still we may, or quite possibly should, think about what our purpose behind it is. What are we trying to enable or accomplish?
Now, Greed can exist with or without it. We may argue that the main reason any attempts at Communism didn't work out is strictly - and ironically - a function of it. To say: If Greed isn't 'restricted' by the however solid margins of currency, it may rise to even more ludicrous heights of greedful insanity.

Anyway. As the simple matter of availability is more complicated than that what just is - so is currency. And among capitalists it has thus, I'd assume, become a mantra of sorts: To not meddle with its flow. Ignoring that I'd say, that the artificial scarcity of money is only making things more complicated for us. If so the amount of money were to remain the same, while the population itself is growing, "hickups" of some proportion are inevitable. Then I assume we have banks that lend money to the Governments if they need more of it - and so, the amount of debt a nation is in is a rather chaotic reflection of its own population growth, we might say. Plus that ... paying it back is like paying banks because people exist. Actual, real debt is being made when we attempt to make an extra effort. That is when we ask for more - to then do things that will lateron be of use to us. But because of the way things are, we have no serious means of measuring this 'extra effort' - so that instead it feels like 'extra effort' is all that life is about nowadays.

Then, say we have population growth - so that, it certainly happens somehow, now more people exist that have the money to sustain themselves. That simply means: More people buying stuff is a simple byproduct of population growth. That means - implying that we are of the minds that the value of money is to stay the same - more profit for those that sell stuff. At least the essential stuff. Of that profit some may go back into employment, but with the ever increasing efficiency of how we do work - technological advancements might even make up for whatever excess work is being required. At least on a: Work needed per [x] people serviced basis we need less work to accomplish more than "since capitalism started".

And while all that is already complicating things, ontop of that we have what I want to call "overprofit".
Or 'excess profit'. Profit at first is certainly a derivative of property. But, and that we somehow still struggle with, at some point that 'property' becomes a commodity. In most places Grocery stores are ... essential. A Grocery store is like, well, a "Super Market" - except it's also a company/corporation. Thereby some individual or individuals are said to offer us a Service, a Service that however used to be met by a piece of ground existing. Where people could go to sell stuff. As for life as it is where I live, a few things are pretty much essential: Smart-Phone, e-mail address and transportation. And off of the top of my head I probably underestimate just how much contracts I'm technically legally obliged to adhere to.
With these commodities I think it is so, that they can no longer be regarded "private property". At least to the point that the profits made by them is more so than usual to be regarded as common wealth. And long story short it all simply amounts to the simple idea that after a certain amount of wealth, people should essentially be taxed "into the ground". With proper cooperation we don't need individuals to have ungodly amounts of capital in order to expand and innovate. Well, that would however require that those that are in a position to act do so in favor of the 'common' wealth, as opposed to their own.

And another long story short: Clearly ... we did Capitalism to ourselves. More or less. Or: The way it is ... isn't the one and only way it could be. And although we probably should also consider God having a hand in it - for the most part ... it's utterly Godless.


The less complicated the more simple

So, obviously - as per the individual, we can only do so much. And that ... is either good or bad, depending on the circumstance. Like so we again live in times ... of great turmoil. And most of us ... as it may have ever been ... are simultaneously innocent but also responsible. Like ... climate change. While those that have brought it about don't care much about combating it, we are to cut back on consumption. But also are we to make more babies, driving consumption, somehow. I don't know. This stuff wasn't ever really explained to me. Or anyone ... for that matter, I suppose.

But it's also fair to say that we, as a whole, haven't ever really developed proper structures that would enable us to act as we'd like. Well, at least none sufficient for our contemporary needs. And thus ... we are, once again, to evolve.

It's ... life as we know it.
I mean ... life, as per our bodies of flesh, is - well, as some have put it: existing towards death. In a way we can say that we're constantly "digesting ourselves". I mean, we eat - some of that matter is converted into body mass - and some of it eventually dies off, to be replaced by the next generation of stuff from what we ate. So are we, over time, like a worm that moves forward by growing towards where it wants to be, and dieing off where it came from. So, kind of gross actually.
So is life a constant churning and turning - and yet we experience it as something ... more consistent. Wholistic.

And so are we to grow into what we want to be. And as it stands, we ... have a choice. You know the drill ...


I mean ... speaking of Russia/Putin or Israel/Netanyahu ... the case might seem to be complicated; At least once people insist on bringing all sorts of reasoning and justification for this and/or that into it. And ... so I've seen Hasan Piker on Piers Morgan through the lens of Vaush reacting to it - and it's one example of how the perpetrator would insist on injecting themselves to produce a "both sides" kind of argument.
Sure ... the matter with Nato encroaching on Russian sensitivities has been ... cooking before Russia invaded the Ukraine and so it didn't really come as much of a surprise when it happened. Just like Hamas doing Hamas things. Or Israel doing Israel things for that matter. That doesn't make it right however. Especially given that Putin is more like ... trying to annex the Ukraine rather than ... pushing back Nato. And still when people speak about Peace in that regard, they mean to say that the Ukraine should just give up. And so, all of it has all of a sudden become complicated.

And yea. It's like ... why can't we just ... stop it? Well ... the thing would be that Israel the nation insists on Israel the Land as given to Jacob by God - while "all" of them just happily ignore those parts of the scriptures that clearly state conditions to their ownership of that land. Or so ... something about a 'new' Covenant to replace the old one.
"Complicated" but not actually.
Like ... why did God insist that Israel cleanse the land of all non-israelites ... back in the day? One suggestion is ... that without disgruntled offspring, no rebellion. But then there's also religious harmony, racism ... the kind of racism that Israel is guilty of nowadays; Or whatever. It matters not. The thing is that there probably were times where the Israelites were the innocent ones and times where they have been the guilty ones. To just say: "Israel Good" - like all those that call people anti-semetic for merely criticizing the way they conduct themselves - just doesn't cut it. Like, so ... are we to say they're right by comparing Palestinians to Animals? How is that different to ... what happened in Germany? "Because Israel"?

Anyway. What I'm getting at is that "just stop" - in a sense of "back to how it was before 'whatever we're talking about today happened'" - leaves us with a situation that's still ... boiling. It's like ... us trans people were getting rights until enough transphobes made enough of a fuzz about it so that our objections were perceived as offensive. At least that's how things feel sometimes. Not around me ... I want to make that clear. But when I look into Reddit ... it's really ... bad. I mean, talking to a friend and doomerism and stuff I meant to take out my phone and scroll through Reddit to see how many depressing stories would pop up during a quick scroll. And it was a lot. Like, ever so often I open Reddit and within a minutre I've already got too much.
But that's not the fault of Reddit. And mods trying to keep political contant out ... aren't really accomplishing anything. It's just the world around us that ... isn't really compatible with these sentimentalities anymore.

And that's also why (Neo-)Gnosticism can't really be non-political either ... anytime soon.

Like ... 'TURN THE OTHER CHEEK'. It's easy to be the one in control to ask the one that's being abused to turn the other cheek. It's ... while these phrases are supposed to have meaning - sometimes they're just dull. Especially, or "at least", when people who don't really care about them use them.
Same with forgiveness. It seems that while the little one is to forgive - and to put more effort into things - that same doesn't apply to those in charge. Like they're way too important for that. And so it's once more you that has to be sorry for insisting on too much. Whatever ... too much is.

I mean - "we" have had this discussion before. The matter with George Floyd brought it up. While people argued that the backlash to police brutality was inevitable - the other side kept saying that "violence is no solution". And it are those that now keep cheerleading for Israel carpet bombing civilians. And when throwing the idea of "turning the other cheek" into the discussion ... well, guess who's supposed to be doing that!

So we on the other hand see that ... eventually a violent reaction is like ... inevitable. And that's concerning. And the blame isn't on the individual that's provoked towards resorting to violence - but those that provoke it. Clearly. What I think should happen ... so, me as a Christian, doesn't matter ... because for once, obviously, it would apply to both sides. Else ... well. Right now we're beyond turning the other cheek. I mean, Palestine. Whatever they do ... it's too late for Israel to come out with a clean image.
And the same can be said about Putin.

And so ... all that is happening.
I mean ... within the confines of the world as it is ... the entire concept behind things like the UN is for nations to come together, cooperatively, as in a civilized manner. And without the willingness to threaten with Nuclear War ... some of the demands formulated therein might appear to be toothless. However ... Civilization at large cannot function if the entities involved aren't willing to self-regulate ... unto the demands of a peaceful society.

And I'm sure there is much to be disliked ... either way, any way around ... . That's the world we live in. But guess what ... once again I'm here to remind you that there's a solution. Ignoring it doesn't make it go away.


Where's the new ...?

And so ... although the specifics may be new, it is the same ol same ol song and dance. And while that is so ... I personally ... well, I'm still growing sick of it. Which as a more or less consistent condition means that ... I'm internally having a more and more adverse reaction to all of that nonsense. And ... yea ... listening to pro-Israel rhetoric arguing why they have to do what they do ... is one of those things that gets me boiling.

Ontop of that I'm also ... totally out of the loop. I mean, I cannot keep up to date with all the latest Bullshit that's getting everyone upset. So am I more tuned out - and as that trend is probably going to continue; I need to find a more consistent way of checking out. Not however to do nothing.

I however haven't quite figured that part out yet. It's just ... there. A dim light. AN idea. A maybe. A ... wouldn't it be nice? Or a ... 'could it be ... ' ... ? Nice? The right thing to do?
Well ...

We'll see ...