What is the first sign of civilization in a vast and mighty wilderness? A wall! A wall in the wilderness tells a profound story. What about the story behind the purposes and functions of walls? Especially that a wall is the first sign of civilization and also the first sign of violence. Thusly, a wall speaks of and promises violence. What is the basic intention behind building walls? Is the purpose to keep in ? Is the purpose to keep out? The one who builds the wall also has a story to tell. The purpose of the wall may be to provide security....something to hide behind; in a public sense and in a private sense.... a fear of violence. Each sense suggesting that violence is threatening the builder and the builder must get away or hide away. These walls are for the purpose of keeping out. What about keeping in, as a fortress, as ownership...."if you step over this line, something bad will happen to you." The "I need you to respect me and to respect what is mine". These walls can be expected to move, to expand out beyond themselves, ever so slowly at first, and then faster, until the original boundaries are vastly over-extended and the builder becomes much richer and much more threatening to his neighbors because of his walls. His walls violated those of his neighbors, claiming what was theirs as his...and then building his walls higher, much higher to protect his wrongly gotten gains, to protect his stolen property.
Is it possible that in every situation in life, humans build walls? Is wall building an inherent, trickle down characteristic, then, of humanity, as division is the inherent faculty of creation, division in both cases bringing about Time, place, and Matter? Can we assume that Time, Place, and Matter are the basic foundation walls of creation, built by humanity, as in the collective unconsciousness? What about these walls, constructed through the limitations of Time, located through the limitations of Place, and hidden and smothered through the limitations of Matter; these walls behind which each concept of division seeks its own existence? Is it possible that the walls of creation are the walls of the human mind, these walls of unquestioning Faith and the walls of empowering, empirical, Reason?
Does religion need and promote these walls? Does religion need the parameters of Time, Place, and Matter? Does science need and promote these walls? Does science need the parameters of Time, Place. and Matter? Are these walls beneficial or destructive to creation, particularly to humanity and to the planet that sustains life as we know it? Is humanity and the walls humanity has created beneficial or destructive to its own purpose and determination?
The most basic symbol of historical division is a wall. The Hunter and Gatherer Age moved into the Agrarian Age with the appearance of walls. The claiming of land was essential to the Agrarian Age. From early recorded history, walls were the visible manifestation of humanity separating itself into groups, tribes, clans, settlements, and eventually cities, and then, nations. When a group forms it forms against the rest of society. It is dividing or separating itself from the rest of humanity. We unite, only to divide. We unite for the purpose of power; for protection against the loss of power and for the opportunity to amass power through combined effort. The divided land of Israel/Palestine has been focused in these posts on violence....what of the high walls surrounding Jerusalem?
What we think of as unity is actually division. Uniting/joining, whether it be through marriage, family, town, country or religion, is a breaking apart that separates and divides. We try to take and amass the power of others to add to and enforce our own. We cause animosity, we create violence for the sake of the power in a facade of unity to, then, come against and defeat another person, another group, another nation. Nations promote wars to unite as a country, to unite under a leadership. We unite that we may divide. We unite to separate from and, thereby, to gather power. Power is amassed in community which then divides down into smaller pieces of itself until, ultimately, power locates in the individual, for the gods are many, but God is One. There lies deep within humanity, the desire of each person to become God through building walls, from dividing down through the amassing of power for the purpose of achieving Perfection. For what is Perfection, anyway, but becoming God? Perfection and God are One.
No comments:
Post a Comment