At one time, progressives were those who had enough balls to publish witty, satirical
rhetoric about the world. Come to think of it, that was the time when it actually took balls to go against the grain. To have a new idea and actually stand up for it meant to stare fear in the face and flip it the bird. You had to have respect for yourself to make social and ideological change.
Now, you can parade yourself around as “original” just by belonging to an established counter-culture that is, frankly, more mainstream than “mainstream.” And if someone so much as looks at you the wrong way, you cry “freedom of speech!”, shake your fist in their face, and then turn on your heel and run fast in the opposite direction, hoping that people are cheering on your audacity all the while.
Well, maybe your ass isn’t so bad to look at running away, but I’d rather stand face-to-face with someone willing to do something truly new and with enough respect for their cause not to pee their pants at the first sign of opposition.
I’m reminded of a poem by one of my most beloved poets, T.S. Eliot, appropriately titled (pardon his French) “The Triumph of Bullshit”:
“Ladies, on whom my attentions have waited
If you consider my merits are small
Etiolated, alembicated,
Orotund, tasteless, fantastical,
Monotonous, crotchety, constipated,
Impotent galamatias
Affected, possibly imitated,
For Christ’s sake stick it up your ass.
Ladies, who find my intentions ridiculous
Awkward insipid and horribly gauche
Pompous, pretentious, ineptly meticulous
Dull as the heart of an unbaked brioche
Floundering versicles feebly versiculous
Often attenuate, frequently crass
Attempts at emotions that turn isiculous,
For Christ’s sake stick it up your ass.
Ladies who think me unduly vociferous
Amiable cabotin making a noise
That people may cry out “this stuff is too stiff for us” -
Ingenuous child with a box of new toys
Toy lions carnivorous, cannons fumiferous
Engines vaporous - all this will pass;
Quite innocent - “he only wants to make shiver us.”
For Christ’s sake stick it up your ass.
And when thyself with silver foot shalt pass
Among the Theories scattered on the grass
Take up my good intentions with the rest
And then for Christ’s sake stick them up your ass.”
And what ever happened in the course of history that made liberals think that they had to become bleeding hearts that save others at the expense of themselves? Charitible heart, philanthropists… They’re a dime a dozen. And their songs and their art and their heartstring-pulling politics are just as plentiful.
I will allow modern liberals this little bit of room: This is a confused age. Women have rights, minorities have rights, there are a million programs in place for the homeless, the unemployed, the elderly, the destitute, the abused, the lost… Yes, there are still issues, nothing seems to work entirely; we always miss people, the legislation still has holes, the hungry still don’t have enough food, the poor still get poorer, the sick still get sicker, and people still die. But it doesn’t take near as much balls to come out and fight for a cause than it once did. You won’t usually get shot for being openly gay, your family probably won’t disown you for marrying a black man or woman, and you won’t get thrown into the ocean with a brick tied to your ankle for looking sideways at a priest.
Don’t get me wrong: the causes are noble. But all the people who pity others and themselves for being victimized by life… Just shut up. There was a time for pity. There was a time for benign fundraisers and tearful, ideological speeches. We get the point, thanks.
If there’s some kind of change you want to see, take a hint from past generations: “Be the change you wish to see in the world.” Embody the change, live the change! Don’t just talk about it and cry about it and sing about it and strum your guitar about it. We are all well-aware by now of all your causes.
If you go around being selfless, giving and giving until you are only an empty shell of a human, what was it all for? For someone else? Imagine you have given of yourself your whole life, and all of the sudden, everyone is filled, no one ever dies again, and all the children grow up in loving homes…
But what’s left of you?
You are to be that change! You are NOT to loose yourself in the process! If you save a homeless person, do NOT do so at your own expense! You are to be a role-model for the world, and your very way of life should say, “Look at how beautiful it is to be an empowered human being. Look at how beautiful it is to know who you are and respect your own body and spirit!”
In this age, there is absolutely no good that can come of dis-empowering anyone, including yourself!
Go to the homeless, go to the lonely, go to those who are lost and outcast; go to them, grab them by the hand, and pull them out of the dust and the dark, and walk beside them…
As cliche as the message of Jesus has become, just look at it for a moment. His true teachings were not of losing yourself for the sake of others! The moment he was made into a god and martyred, his true cause was lost. When selfish and confused people crucified his memory and deified his life, he became the “cosmic redeemer” and his message was twisted, if not entirely lost for centuries.
They managed to displace their own anger and guilt onto a beautiful man with a beautiful life and message and turn it into something so grotesque, so ugly.
St. Augustine, one of the most prolific and influential creators of Christian docrine (the first to coin the idea of “Original Sin”) wrote in his work once about how guilty and sinful he was because if he were to be lying with a beautiful, naked woman, he did not believe he could control himself, his body would “betray” him and he would wish to be with her.
Holy mother of all that is kind in this world! Depak Chopra writes in his translation of the Kama Sutra, “Sex isn’t the original sin. Guilt is.” And just to drive that point in a little further, the story of St. Augustine’s youth tells that as a young man, he once stole from another’s garden, and for the rest of his life, was ridden with that guilt.
Instead of dealing with it and coming to be an empowered human being, the bastard created an entire paradigm, centuries of displaced guilt and dis-empowerment of the individual, all because it disguisted him that he had within him the desires of the physical and the desire for that which he did not possess himself.
My question to that cosmic failure of a man is this: Who in this beautiful world hasn’t had desire? You think you are so goddamned special… Just because you had charisma, just because you had enough stature to be in a place to dis-empower generations of beautiful beings, still doesn’t give you the right to take away the true spirit of Jesus, or me, or my guilty Catholic friends, or anyone in this world! Just because you could write didn’t give you the right to twist and mangle the teachings of one of the most incredible beings that ever walked God’s green earth!!
Jesus’ true teachings were of the empowerment of the self; he was the one who gave sight to the blind just because of his presence. He lifted up the crippled and told them to walk! He did not lift them up and carry them himself, he gave them back their own divine spark, their own innate desire to live, their own intrinsic power. He had such a strong presence that it made people wonder, “What does he have that we don’t?” And when he said “I have nothing you don’t, what’s in me is in all of you just as powerfully,” the people who truly understood that took it and became it, and became powerful men and women, men and women of love and beauty and truth.
You know why welfare doesn’t work? Are you starting to see why socialist policy and a bleeding heart truly does nothing for the world?
My mother told me about what one of her close friends once did for the homeless of the city near where I grew up. He was a fairly well-off man, and as such, he desired to do something for those in the area who were struggling. So, he went straight to the source. He went to the homeless and made a plan with them: he would purchase all the materials and machinery necessary for them to start up their own lawn care business, so that they could actually have a chance to make a living and a better life. So, he bought all the equipment, helped them set up their business plan, and gave it over to them.
He came back after a small time, and they had done nothing. They had not changed at all.
Go ahead and take my words to mean that I believe that some people just can’t rise above it, some people are just intrinsically lazy and bad and there’s nothing we can do for them.
But that’d be so easy, far too easy to say. Honestly, I’ll just refer you to every single previous writing I’ve ever done about how everyone possesses the divine spark, the desire to live, the passion for life and change and personal growth, and pretend you didn’t even think it.
For God’s sake–literally–stand up. Get on your feet, whether you are a millionaire or a dying old man, and have the balls to the be the change you wish to see! In your mind and in your daily life and in your heart and in your spirit, be the change. Be something truly new.
“The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? Why should we not have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs?”
Emerson challenges us to step outside our beloved religion, our comfortable tradition, and to create something for ourselves, to be empowered as ourselves, in our own age and our own living room and on our own time.
Either get out of my way or step out with me and be the change. I hope for your own good you choose the latter.
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