I think in the modern world many of us are in a process of disillusionment. You might ask “disillusionment with what” and the answer would be, with just about everything there is. God and religion have been disillusioned since before the enlightenment and it’s surprising how long it took some things to catch up. For example people have been disillusioned with the government for years. Same with schools, the media, religion, culture, science, and just about everything else.
We’re discovering and/or have discovered that every can be manipulated and used to mislead and lie to us, and more importantly, that everything has. The churches lie, the politicians lie, the media lies, the schools lie, your family lies, and so on and so forth. Lies, lies, lies everywhere you look, It’s enough to drive a man insane. And so much of it stems from having faith in something that man should never have faith in. Now at first you might think that I’m going to talk about God, but I’m not.
While many versions of “faith” are in fact just foolishness. For example expecting God to do things for you instead of doing it yourself, thinking the God is going to save you or anything. That’s all foolishness and a “faith” that will only lead to destruction. However I do think that overall belief in a higher power and something beyond this world and plane of existence is actually wise on both a individual scale and of course a society wide scale. But that’s not what this is about. This is about something else.
The False Faith Of Our Time
I love stories, I don’t think that’s a secret. Well I like well done stories that have timeless meaning and share deep wisdoms. I love mythology, I think it teaches a lot about the world and how life and humanity works. I love parables, satire, and narrative. Story in all its forms. When combing through what I think are some of the best stories there is a common theme that stands out, at least in the classics. And that’s the many and varied ways that man can go wrong, and often does. Even in a society that works to fight against these errors.
Much less in a society that promotes these errors. Which brings me to the greatest error of our time, that has been a great error since essentially the “enlightenment” but has been before. The error that we almost all share and that when we put our faith in it, it can do nothing but fail us. Can you guess what that error is? That error is having faith in man. Now what does that mean “to have faith in man”? Does that mean to believe that man is capable of good, of nobleness, of rising above his station? No, of course not. Man can and has done all of those things, especially at the individual level but even occasionally at the societal level.
No what I mean by having faith in man is thinking that man is the end all be all, that man will perfect itself, that man is the highest power. You see it all the time. The unquestioning belief in the “science” of the “experts”, believing that all man is inherently good and that we’re all the same, believing the man will work out his own problems and form his own way. It’s the great religion and the great delusion of our time. Some might call it humanism but it goes further than that. Faith in man leads to destruction, because man is not something you should place your faith in.
The Truth About Mankind
While there are certainly those that are “a little lower than the angels” the fact of the matter is, most of humanity is a bunch of stupid, stinking, violent, hateful apes. Nothing more and nothing less, and that included me. The more you see of the world and of mankind the more you realize how absolutely foolish it is. Man is a horrible creature. Only through severe beatings can he hope to be anything of worth. A little kidding there, but not as much as you think. Man does need a crucible, to be put to the fire, to become anything worthwhile. He is not born like that.
Only the naïve, ignorant, and foolish can have faith in mankind as a whole. Man will never perfect himself, if he sees himself as the end all be all he will keep becoming a sicker parody of what he was created to be. Don’t look at this through a religious lens but just a lens of reality. There is a certain relation in the world that when broken causes things the break down. When man doesn’t see beyond himself, he and the society around him breaks down. Don’t put your faith in man. But that begs the question, what do you put your faith in?
Am I saying you have to put your faith in “god” whatever that means? Am I saying you have to join a religion or you’re a fool? Of course not, I’m not telling you what to place your faith in, I’m telling you what not to put your faith in. I don’t have all the answers to this, or any other topic I’ve ever covered or written words on. If I had to place my “faith” in anything it’d be the primal/cosmic order mentioned in the article referenced above. To that God, which is simply reality. Religion is of man anyways and we already know not to put our faith in that. Don’t put your faith in man, for that way lies destruction.
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-Charles Sledge
