this is an attempt at psycho-history… and what exactly does that mean?
it means I shall, to the best of my abilities, try to shed light on people
via history within a psychological vein…
let us work out an example to see what I mean…
we see many people in America who claim to be Christians…
followers of Jesus… and they proclaim this “fact” in a very loud voice…
and so do we accept their “commitment” to the following of the values
promoted by Jesus at face value or, or do we see if what they claim is true…
I say we investigate their claims and decide for ourselves if they are true followers…
Jesus offered up his beliefs in a series of parables…
we shall look at a couple of parables…
for example, the parable of the good Samaritan…
and the question of the good Samaritan is simple,
“Who is my Neighbor?”
so, who is your Neighbor?
in the bible, luke chapter 10,
Behold a lawyer stood up and said, “teacher, what shall I do to inherit
eternal life?”
the teacher replied “what is written in the law? How do you read it”
the Lawyer answered " You shall love the lord as your god with all your heart,
and all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your
neighbor as yourself"
the teacher replied “you have answered this correctly. Do this and you will
live”
but the lawyer, desiring to justify himself asked Jesus, “who is my
neighbor?”
if we are to turn society, the government, the state into a theocracy,
as many of the religious wishes to do, then we must decide who is our
neighbor?
the religious right of America today, wish to have limits upon who is
our neighbor… for example, they were quite ok with IQ45 putting
children into concentration camps because they were “illegal aliens”
and apparently, you can only be a neighbor if, if you are an
American…
and listening to the right wing, they call liberals, “anti-Americans”
and so they don’t consider liberals as being Americans, so apparently
you can’t consider liberals as being your neighbor…
and listen to the right wing, and they dismiss and despise
people of color, minorities…so if you are a person of color
or a minority, you cannot be a neighbor…
but let us look at the religion that was founded by Paul,
a disciple of Jesus… the Religion was called Catholicism…
and what does the word Catholic actually mean?
it means universal…it doesn’t mean to exclude others, it is
about inclusion of everyone who are the children of god…
who is a neighbor? according to the very word Catholicism,
everyone, for everyone is the universal name of anyone outside of
yourself…
and why does this matter? because the right wing wish to exclude anyone
who doesn’t fit into their vision of what is to be an American…now, this should
mean that they exclude based upon a religious context, but they don’t do
that… they exclude based upon being an American or being some suitable
candidate for being an American… it has nothing to do with the religious
context… in other words, the religious right has turn a religious question
into a political question…and that is why this question belongs here and
not in the religious forum…
and in doing so, they have weakened the religious beliefs in America…
they hold political beliefs that correctly should be held as religious
beliefs…
therein lies the failure of the religious right wing since the 1980’s…
when they decided to forego religious questions for political questions…
they decided to become political and vote in politicians who were
favorable to the religious right wing…and they lost their soul at that
moment…it marked the end of religion in America… when they lost the
religious viewpoint in exchanged for the political viewpoint…
so the question “who is your neighbor?” is answered in political terms
and not in religious terms…and until the religious right wing returns to
religion, they shall not have any peace or understanding…
by their engagement with politics instead of religion, they lost what it means
to be religious… the question of religion is a question about one’s relationship
with god and not one’s relationship with the state…if you answer political
questions from a religious framework, you have lost both sides of that question…
so the history of America over the last 40 years, the cultural wars,
is because of the religious right wing decision to abandon religion
for politics… and religion isn’t about the political and the political
isn’t about religion…they are two different and distinct area’s of
operation…
so the question then arises, why would the religious right wing
abandon religion for politics?
and the answer is easy enough to find… they were no longer interested
in the religious… they had lost their way in the world and couldn’t find
a path back to god… so they took the path of least resistance and
choose to become political…as a substitute for the religion
they no longer believed in…the god they no longer believed in…
but they had a problem… there own self image required them to
maintain an self image of belief in god… we hold powerful self images
of our self…we imagine ourselves to be the hero of our own stories…
and part of that play into the self image that we hold of ourselves…
part of our self image might be “I believe in god” now you may have actually
lost your belief in god, but your self image demands that you still
pretend to hold that image… even if you don’t… so we are carriers
of our own self image… and we would do anything not to challenge our
own self image… including lying to ourselves and being alienated
and disconnected from ourselves… because the most important
thing for people is to hold on to their own self image even if, if it
doesn’t actually reflect the reality of the situation…and quite
often becomes counter productive…
so for a lot of people, a believe in god is about holding
a self image about ourselves… even if we don’t believe anymore…
the self image is all important, even to possible
damage we might face by our refusal to change our own self image…
to match the reality on the ground…
bad conscience is simply one holding on to values and beliefs that
one no longer believes in, to protect a self image…
why do you hold on strongly the self image of being a christian, or
of being an American? to protect your own self image…
so what is your self image? and do you hold onto your self image
even if the reality on the ground says you are not longer that self image…
think of the gay man… who because of a self image, remains in the
closet instead of openly becoming who he is…
the self image stands in the way of him becoming who he really is…
so how does your self image stand in the way of your becoming who you
really are? what is your self image? and does that self image, that we all have
of ourselves, really a self image that matches what are beliefs really are?
I hold that our need for a strong self image overrides or overcomes
the truth of who we really are… we would rather be the self image due
to ego, instead of becoming who we really are despite the fact that the
who we really are, is different then our self image…
compare the reality of your life with your self image…
and see how different they are from each other…
but of course few have the courage to actually see who they really are…
the self image we hold hides, distorts our real selves and hides that reality
from our eyes…
rub the self image from your ego and your eyes and see who you
really are and how that is different from your self image of yourself…
Kropotkin