After the age of restoration, there had been a common belief that meddling too deeply in the past - prior to the great purification - would do nobody no good.
The reason for this was that being exposed to the primitive mindset of the eternally power-struggling and heavily polarized Ancients would only drag your own mind back down to the same basic level of thought, and harm your own balance.
But Pi didn’t seem to have anything but the usual glowing enthusiasm in his eyes as he continued his speech at the gathering back in Lhasa before the trip started.
”Imagine if this opportunity really holds the key to obtain a deeper understanding of how the Ancients were able to build their structures, how they exchanged information, why they viewed the world with their brains split in half? It could tell us so much about who we have been and how we got to where we are today."
Njoro's senses seemed to try to tell her that seeking this knowledge could have awful consequences, and she raised her voice "How can this be of any good? The changes taking place in the Middle North these days seem to be re-emerging ideas from the old times. We all know that any return to this misunderstood worldview can only lead us to yet another disaster. Do you really believe that getting too far into this would give us any advantage at all?"
Njoro felt that she had posed her question quite sensibly, and with much clarity. She felt content about it.
"Dear sister Njoro. I believe the most valuable thing would be to understand their mindset, to begin with. If we knew how the Ancients could become so totally out of balance with this world, we could maybe use this knowledge to stop these ideas from spreading once again. And we need every advantage and insight we can get in order to handle the situation we're in.”
Of course this was very reasonable.
”Yes, but such a journey could cost us dearly, and already it seems we’re only able to keep things together with a full circle operating from within the House. On an everyday basis.” Sister Tsha-Tui had a vulnerable tint in her usually tranquil-beyond-words voice. ”And what if we overspend our energies on a task leading us nowhere? It would put both those part-taking in this quest in great danger, and at the same time weaken our strength back here. What then?”
”I see your point, Sister, but already the changes have brought upon us so many challenges that holding fort here can only keep us afloat for so long. I would strongly regret it if we waited here until this disease of thought had spread all over the planet once again, and all we can do is stay here and defend our last bastion.”
Pi seemed so eager to take on the journey that he would pick any reasonable (or even unreasonable) argument to convince the assembled circle of Brothers and Sisters of the House that the expedition was nothing but a good idea. He had an air of obsession about him, and obsession was something that was usually unwanted within the walls of the House.
But Pi being Pi, his radiant enthusiasm would leave you with the impression that this was the most wonderful of solutions, and that everyone would experience extreme happiness and joy if they were to share his positive view on the situation. He just had that quality.
"I believe you more than insist?", Sister Tsha-Tui said.
"I would never claim any authority that would allow insisting, but I ask the Circle of the House to consider my argument."
At this point Njoro knew he'd already won their faith, but said nothing.
”I see. But you would only bring a handful of companions?” Sister Tsha-Tui finally said. ”We can only follow our duties with the most experienced souls still in the circle of the House, so I will suggest that you choose only from among those young and eager enough to be willing to go, and who share your faith in the success of this journey. And not the least; willing to share your fate.”
"Let the Inner Circle fall to silence and look for the answer at the centre of the Wheel."
They all joined hands, took a deep breath and closed their eyes.
After a moment of eternity, they returned one by one, and as every pair of eyes had adjusted to the waking world, they sat up and were ready for a decision.
"What did we see?", Sister Tsha-Tui said.
"Ice.", one elder said.
"Ice.", Maya-Shi said.
"Darkness.", the Oldest said, in her slow, hoarse voice. "Darkness. And ice."
"Ice. And something very old." Sha-Ton said.
"And more ice.", Pi said. Smiling.
"Ice.", Njoro finally said.
"And a whole lot of fire", she thought.
"Then we have decided." Sister Tsha-Tui raised her voice as to make a conclusive air around the room.
"Who will you ask to join you in this task, Brother Pi?"
Pi let his eyes wander slowly around the room.
”Njoro!”, he looked right into her eyes and made her feel special. ”Will you follow me?”
”Yes.” She felt no resistance at all.
”Brother Sha-Ton!”
”As you wish.” The young man stepped forward into the midst of the circle.
He went on and carefully selected his small entourage, and as they closed the meeting with the usual ritual of gratitude, Sister Tsha-Tui added a special sequence at the end that she insisted would be of crucial importance to their success in their task.
Now, months later, as she pushed herself through the ruthless white landscape, she thought that the suspicion of trouble she had felt back then had only pointed to the tiniest tip of the massive iceberg that this task now had become.
Monday, April 27, 2009
Monday, April 20, 2009
The two-faced Emperor
"Sacred what?" Vix was sitting in the coffee-shop with Mr. Friend, looking a bit bewildered. The opening had taken him by surprise, making him choke on his coffee. Without stopping Mr. Friend handed Vix a paper napkin.
”Sacred geometry, I said."
"As in a mix between Maths and Religion classes? Are you gonna go all Dan Brown on me now?"
"Quite. Take the Pyramid, for example, unlike anything you’ve seen in nature except in some crystal structures. As a symbol it sits on the far opposite end of chaos. It is indeed a most fascinating structure. Four sides at the base square. Four triangles merge in a fifth point at the summit. The perfect geometrical figure to express the number five. Made up of threes and the square root of four, which I take even your slumbering brain deep, deep within knows is two, which together with three, makes...”
”Five.”
”There’s a reason one uses ’he can’t even put two and two together’ as the perfect example to describe the ultimate stupidity, and not ’he can’t even put two and three together’. It would be too close to the core of the philosophy of five, where we find the pyramid as the central symbol, and for obvious reasons some people don’t want us to go there. At least not yet.”
”The philosophy of five?”
”Yes. Haven’t you noticed the amount of fives that surround you?”
”Not really, but all I have in my pocket is a fiver, if that’s what you mean?” Vix could tell Mr. Friend wasn’t up for much two-way communication today, as he was already mid-way throught his next sentence:
”Well, take the Pentagon building for starters, since you are so interested in power.”
”I’m not interested in power!”
”Yes you are. And it’s all penta-this and penta-that when it comes to the rulers of the New World, though no-one have really bothered to make any ’official’ explanation as to why they’re so obsessed with it. Then you have the five-pointed star - The Pentagram. ’Every man and woman is a star’, it has once been claimed. Visualise a human being standing upright with legs apart and arms outstreched. There’s your living, breathing five-pointed star. The five pillars central in the Muslim faith. The five most commonly known senses; sight, hearing, smell, touch and taste.”
”But hey! Isn’t this what weird people do? If you start seeing patterns of five everywhere, next thing you know it’s the funny-farm with a padlock?”
”You would be amazed at how many bright people are brought into custody on the background of a mental-health excuse.”
Vix wondered how Mr. Friend knew this, but got cut off before had the chance to make a comment.
”Then you can go on and spell the name Joshua in Hebrew for me.”
”You’re joking. How would I know how to do that?”
”If schools had the faintest interest in educating children and passing on real and valuable knowledge of our history, you would have had no problem with that. But I’ll do it for you; Yod, Hé, Shin, Vau, Hé.”
”Aha. Five letters. It’s a kind of magic! Who’s Joshua?”
”Jesus. Jesus Christ.”
”The Messiah dude? Get outta here! I wouldn’t have guessed that he would turn up here.” Vix tried to sound surprised in the most superficial way possible.
”You don’t seem to be taking this very seriously. Maybe you would like to take one of your five fingers on your right hand and pick your snotty little nose with it instead? It might be a more suitable illustration.”
”But hang on. You’re telling me Jesus Christ is in on the ’philosophy of five’ thing? Firstly I don’t even believe such a figure ever existed, it’s all hype. And secondly you’re sounding a bit too much like a spooky weirdo now. I preferred it when you talked about mass-media manipulation and world politics.”
”Divide and conquer.”
”Why do you say that?”
”They are all aspects of the same thing, and as long as you regard politics as separate from all this, you’ll never understand what is going on. There are even five aspects of the great power-machine you’re so in love with, too. Five great tools to obtain total control and keep people like you detatched from yourself and hold up the great illusion of this world.”
”Really? And they are?”
”Law, Military Force, Communication, Religion and Money.”
”And they’re all connected, of course?”
”They are all different faces of the same head. They are the tools you need in order to build the world pyramid. Would you like me to tell you more about the inner workings of religion without too many protests now?”
”For sure.”
”Christ is said to be representing the four elements of man; Spirit (Yod), Soul (Hé), Intellect (Vau) and Heart (Hé).”
”I might not be the sharpest of knives, but according to my mathematical skills that makes only four.”
”Ahh. The Brain. Such a useful tool. You see, these four letters alone make up the word Jahve, or Yehova if you’d like. Which I guess you’ll recognise as the god of the Old Testament.”
”Don’t know about that, but I do recognise him from ’Life of Brian’. Hilarious, that stoning scene.”
”Well, I’m glad Monty Python took upon themselves the responsibility of filling in the holes the educational system left out.”
Vix smiled, satisfied with de-railing Mr. Friend’s freight-train of thought.
Mr. Friend frowned and went on:
“But if we insert the letter Shin, representing the human free will, in the middle of Yehova, and thereby balance out the four elements of man with a guiding fifth, we’re left with the name Joshua – or Jesus. The Christ.”
”Dammit!”
”And this is where it all starts getting really interesting.”
”Really? I’m already quite entertained.”
”I haven’t got the faintest intention of entertaining you, Victor. You know how I feel about entertainment in general.”
Vix could see steam building, and added:
”Sorry. Info-tain me, then.”
”Whatever. The core of the knowledge that got mashed together with the whims of those who wrote the manuscript of what we call Christianity today, stems from what can faintly be viewed as natural mythology, or the so-called pagan beliefs of the past. The spiritual science of old.”
”Mashed together?”
”Let’s go back and talk about the Romans for a bit, and the way they built their regime of power.”
”Please.” Vix felt that he had to make himself as comfortable as possible to endure what was about to come.
”The Roman Emperor Gaius Julius Caesar was the most powerful political and military figure in our part of the world during the first century. It was under him that the old Roman Republic expanded into what history refers to as the Roman Empire. Much like we know from other empires of the past, the Emperor was given the status of a demi-god - the Divine Being’s core representative on Earth. This usually worked in the way that not only did the masses underthrow themselves to the sovereign military and political power of their ruler, but also accepted him as their spiritual leader, a position that - at times when pure brutality and law-enforcing met resistance in the public - proved extremely useful to keep things under control."
”So the same Emperor who laid down the rules of society also acted as the God of the people?”
”Which gave them a much harder time standing up against him, as it was a matter of standing up against their own beliefs – an inner force - not the external force of a dictator of flesh, blood and unjustified greed for power. Such a purely mortal force would have been much easier to disagree with, and for people to gather together and pick a fight with.”
"But all this kept people quiet and obedient?"
"When people realize injustice is being done to them they will sooner or later revolt against any oppression and violent law-enforcing, but when it comes down to challenging their own faith they tend to hesitate a whole lot more.”
”Makes sense.”
”This model had already proven to work very well. For the Chinese rulers, for example; the endless respect and fearful admiration that people had for their Emperor as both celestial and earthly ruler extended his power into the wildest dimensions. You can say that Julius Caesar had a few hundred years of political history to draw inspiration from already.”
”So why didn’t he just pass this power on, making his followers the new Gods? Didn't he run into trouble with his family also?”
”Faith. People slowly but steadily lost their faith in him. And in emperors in general.”
”You mean they were wisening up?”
”Sort of. You can only surpress the masses for so long, until their inner feeling of injustice pushes out of their bodies and into society, and then they most certainly will start organising themselves and eventually revolt against you. The struggle for power is always one of manipulating people to believe that what you tell them is more important than what they feel deep within their hearts is right for themselves and their surroundings. And in order to do this you need more than one tool.”
”So as people’s belief in the emperor as half-god deteriorated, he lost his power.”
”He did. And as a lot of people returned to their numerous versions of the small and simple belief-systems that had lived on in the shadows, the Empire started getting into a lot of trouble controlling the masses by law-enforcing alone. In addition, these alternative roads for enlightenment were systems that for the most part stemmed from man’s early observations of Nature – old pagan beliefs. Everything from the knowledge of the healing powers of herbs to the study of the movements of the celestial bodies that told them when to sow, when to harvest, and when to look for shelter when the storms started building up, once again became people’s guidelines.”
”They started listening to the Weather again, instead of listening to the Roman Emperor?”
”Exactly! The Weather, and a whole lot of other natural phenomena.”
”I guess it seems obvious that it got more difficult to rule when people moved away from worshipping the state leader and connected with nature and themselves instead. But I thought the Roman Empire lasted far longer than Caesar?”
”The Roman Empire actually started, or at least expanded into an Empire with Caesar. Before that it was merely known as the Roman Republic, and covered a far lesser geographical area with far less citizens. But they started getting into trouble keeping it all together as they expanded.”
”It was very big?”
”At its peak a few hundred years later the Roman Empire streched from Northern Africa through Egypt into the Middle east via Lebanon and Syria. It covered areas around the Black Sea, Asia Minor, Europe south of the Alps and all the way to Spain, Portugal, France, England and Wales. Most of the people living in this vast area were considered Romans, but when no-one was looking, most people proved very relaxed when it came to their loyalty towards Rome. It wasn’t a question of doing anything extra to stand up for their Emperor. And they all had different religious beliefs.”
”So it wasn’t a scenario of total, centralized control?”
”Not at all. Most people detested the prescense of the Roman soldiers, as most written documentation of the era testfies. And this left a lot of openings for spiritual and political revolutionaries to spread their ideas - the man historically referred to as Jesus from Nazareth being the most famous one today. For several reasons that I will get to in a moment.”
”So already Julius Caesar was struggling to keep it all together, but still you say they managed to keep their power for a few more hundred years, and even expand it?”
”Oh, they’ve managed to keep their power for far longer than that.”
”What do you mean?”
”As an example, let us fast forward into the early fourth century, when Emperor Constantin the 1st ruled from the city of the old Greek city of Byzantium."
"Never heard of it. Are they big on charter-tourism today?"
"Byzantium was re-baptised Nova Roma, soon to be called Constantinopel and today plainly referred to as Istanbul.
”That’s a lot of names for one city.”
”Constantin's predecessor, Emperor Diocletian, had spent almost a decade trying his best to eradicate the rapid growth of Christianity within the empire, as well as another big religion widespread in those days called Manichaeism.”
”Never heard of it, either. Kind of like the Scientology of the times?”
”Not really. I don’t think Manichaeism was a result of a wager between two pennyless science fiction authors.”
”Yeah, I heard about that. The guy who started Scientology did it to prove that he could start his own religion, and his mate put a bet on that he couldn't. I thought that story was just a myth, though.”
”Maybe it, as most myths go, is intended to illustrate the underlying workings of the subject in discussion by the use of more dramatic means. Anyway, let’s leave the bets between Hubbard and his pal Heinlein for now. Back to the Romans. The religious map of the great realm that the poor bugger Diocletian had his hands full with keeping together, was one of great fragmentation. In addition to Christianity and Manichaeism you had Zoroastrianism, Gnosticism and a lot of other, far smaller religions and belief-systems existing throughout the population of the Empire.”
”Much like a massively huge old-school New Age convention?”
”I guess you could call it that. It was a question of fragments of the same universal spiritual guidelines put into many different contexts for different purposes and intents. The only problem was that this made the gap between the state and people’s inner lives broaden, and this gave many small groups the courage to gather and stand up against Rome, something that gave the Emperor a really bad headache. A headache that in addition to his syphilis felt quite unbearable. So he tried, like simple people do, to use force to get rid of the problem.”
”He sent the po-lice on them?”
”Absolutely. But his police were licensed to kill and slaughter – as was the habit in those days.”
”Aren’t they still?”
”Not while people are looking, Victor. We’re not barbarians any longer.”
”Aha. Progress.”
”Progress.”
”But did it work out the way he wanted? Were people scared by his soldiers?”
”Certainly not. This approach never works, as history has shown us time after time. But it worked very well for Christianity. It spread like a fire. Not only was it now fuelled by the success of the uproar by the figure Jesus from Nazareth, who spoke freely of the need to revise and re-vitalise religion and start opposing the church and the Roman occupants, but it also grew stronger by the fact that by trying to destroy Christianity the Emperor seemed to be very afraid of it in the public’s eye. Quite like when President Nixon admitted to feeling so threathened by John Lennon and Yoko Ono by putting them under the surveillance of the FBI and trying to deport them from the US prior to the campaign of his second presidental election.”
”Did he, now? Never heard of that before.”
”You’ve probably never looked for it, then.”
”Not really, no. I only know Nixon from his other crimes.”
”Anyway, our soon-to-be emperor Constantin, who was a bright young fellow, saw all of Diocletian's troubles from the sideline and decided he wanted to become far more successful than his predecessor, as most young people decide when they realize their elders don't have full control. So when Constantin's time came, the first thing he did was to get rid of the competition, to put it simple.”
”What competition?”
”The other Emperor.”
”There was another one?”
”Oh, there were several emperors at times. The Empire of Rome almost fell to pieces towards the end of the third century, as there were around twenty emperors all claiming power of the Empire. But it ended up merely split in half through a system called the Tetrarchy back then. Diocletian ruled the eastern part, and Maximian ruled the western part. It was the intention to keep it this way, but when Diocletian resigned, the power was seized by one Galerius who basically held Constantin hostage for some time to prevent him from claiming power. Maximian still ruled the west at this point."
"Sounds as confusing as the politics of today, only there was more direct killing and torture going on."
"Not much has changed. The media are our new gallows and the game is less clumsy, but the inner workings have stayed the same. But enough of that."
"OK. Go on."
"Constantin managed to flee Galerius' arrest on the excuse of going to England to assist his own father in battle. Galerius let him go, hoping he would fall in battle while away. But Constantin succeeded in England and stayed there, continuing to work his way up to more and more power in the western Empire - by all means necessary. From forging his new titles when reporting back to Galerius on the status of things, to letting a couple of Frankish kings be ripped apart by wild beasts in the amphitheatre to everyone’s entertainment.”
”We’ve come a long way from that to Pop Idol, though. Don’t you think?”
”Have we, now?” Mr. Friend frowned, paused to sip his coffee, which must have gone ice cold bu now. Then he continued: ”By his hard work Constantin soon reigned most of the western part of the Empire. He changed his title to Augustus, which is latin for "majestic", and in this power also controlled one of the largest Roman armies. He eventually got rid of the western ruler Maximian by ordering his suicide, and also quite effectively got rid of another potential obstacle by killing Maximian’s planned successor, his son Maxentius while he was at it.”
”Sounds like an efficient guy.”
”Oh, he was. He had kept on building alliances all along the way by means of a couple of strategic marriages, one of them being Maximians’ daughter Fausta. When he felt his power had expanded sufficiently, he went on and did something of great genius; he teamed up with Galerius’ second in command Licinius, who he – needless to say - later went and had killed. But before this they put together ’the Edict of Milan’, a proclamation that all religions – including Christianity – was now allowed within the Empire.”
”So then I guess he got quite popular. At least more popular than the Emperor before him?”
”Of course. When he saw the effect this declaration had on his popularity with the people, he eventually went on and claimed that he himself also had become a true Christian now, something history has been quite insistent on making us believe was true in hindsight. He even declared that from now on Christianity was the official religion of the Roman Empire.”
”It wasn’t true?”
”Far from it. The ’first Christian Roman Emperor’ Constantin was a true follower of Sol Invictus, as most Roman Emperors before and after him had been.”
”I think I've read about that on the Web. Wasn’t that some kind of sun worshipping cult? Or do you mean the record label?”
”Sol Invictus was more like three sun-worshipping cults thrown into one. Although it could hardly be called a cult at all, as the ’official’ religion of the Roman Empire up till that point had been all such forms of Roman Paganism, in addition to the Imperial Cult that had held the Emperor himself divine. You can find a lot of mythical imagery from these religions printed all over the money of this period.”
”Oh, I thought we were talking kind of occult stuff?”
”Occult only means ’hidden’. And that’s central to the whole scheme of what happened later.”
”Sol Invictus went into hiding?”
”Not really. They just got adapted to the new popular ideas emerging amongst people. And that’s the true genius of it all. Sometimes you can hide things in front of people's own eyes. You just tell them to not look for it.”
”What do you mean they adapted?"
"They shuffled things around a bit. Made sure it looked like they were doing something else than what they actually did, but kept all the main ingredients intact."
"Like a re-edit?”
”Most probably like a re-edit. Whatever that is.”
”So why would Constantin pose as a Christian, if he really was a follower of Sol Invictus? He was the Emperor, he could still have done as he pleased for his personal beliefs.”
”Oh, he did. As I said the basic doctrine of Sol Invictus was based around three divinities thrown into one. Followers of the deities Mithras, El Gabal and Sol all were all associated with the cult, but all three of these beliefs were just based around basic ancient sun-worship and paganism, with all the sacrifices and rites that go with it. This is nothing new, just activities mankind have been pre-occupied with throughout the ages. Ever since the first individual on the planet started recognising the warming sun as its saviour and the night, filled with its predators and dangers, as the great darkness, this has been with us. It’s at the core of all the great ancient eastern religions, the meso-american ones, and in the belief-systems of ancient Egypt. It is at the core of our very beings.”
”The sun as the saviour. Might have been very different if we were nocturnal creatures, then. I almost never saw the sun during my teens, and only listened to dark and heavy music.”
”And that’s funny, but also quite essential here. If you are a predator you’re more likely to worship the night, as it will give you the cover you need in order to sneak up on your prey before you attack it, rip it apart and devour it. Your natural place in this world will give you a set of needs, and you’re very likely to be thankful to the universal mechanisms that fulfill those needs.”
”And the Roman Emperor Constantin, where was he in all this?”
”He was a man seeking power, and like all other power-seeking creatures he had to find the means of getting it, and then make sure he could keep it. The greatest power is held by the sun. At least that's how it seems when you're a mortal man with your feet on the ground."
"But everybody loves the sun."
"Yes. Most of the time. But the sun is also ruthless. It would be sure to kill you if you approached it. The sun is the sun, and no place for man. So for Constantin, when you had a new religion - Christianity - based on compassion and non-violent co-existence with your fellow man spreading like a fire among the people. The same people he intended to reign over, it was not good news at all.
"I guess it would be like launching the idea of fair trade to a unscrupulous stock-broker and expect him to say ’oh, that’s great, I’ll just stop chasing profit and start concentrating on justice immediately’.”
”Which would be not very likely. Unless this would be an unnaturally gifted stock-broker, who instead would say ’great idea’, and then start figuring out how he could make the most profit out of people’s hunger for justice.”
”So you embrace the idea...”
”And start making it work for your own means.”
”You do a re-edit, and fill the floor with some old junk tune.”
”If you say so. So now we had the great new ’Christian’ Emperor, who – in the same year as he launced the ’Edict of Milan’ and declared himself a true Christian – also poisoned his own son Crispus and killed his wife Fausta by throwing her alive into boiling water.”
”Ah, the compassion.”
”The same compassion with which he then made some very smart adjustments to the new official religion of Rome. Firstly, he changed the celebration of the birth of Christ from January 6th to December 25th – coincidentally the same day he and all followers of Sol Invictus already celebrated the winter solstice. He changed the Christian Sabbath – which up until now had followed the jewish one on Saturday – to Sunday - the holy day of Sol Invictus. Then he sent his mother Helena around the Empire restoring churches and giving back treasures that had been seized when Christianity was outlawed, to show his newfound kindness of heart.”
”Ahh. The generousity.”
”He also had his mother bring back pieces of ’the True Cross’ from the Holy Land, the very cross on which Jesus had allegedly been crucified, and erected it in his Nova Roma as a relic of protection.”
”This guy makes artists like Bill Drummond look like total amateurs.”
”He then chose the Labarum as the symbol of this new official Roman religion, a symbol he had his soldiers engrave on their shields when they went into battle with his aforementioned competitor to power, Maxentius, many years earlier. He claimed that he had had a dream or vision from his Christian God that told him that ’under this symbol you will reign’. It consisted of the ancient cross of the Zodiac, where the sun is the center and the two lines represent the equinoxes, with the letter P inserted above it – all enclosed in a circle.”
”Like that P-X thing on the Pope’s forehead?”
”The very same symbol. The P represented the Patriarch, in this case the Emperor himself, reigning with the power of the sun. All within a closed circle, probably to symbolize the fact that all the power should be restrained to the Patriarch and his circle of power.”
”Wow. If all this is true, why didn’t people see it?”
”Do people see anything at all? Ever? They were probably too busy watching an execution or some other form of entertainment of the times.”
”You really don’t like entertainment.”
”No I don’t. I prefer the Truth anytime.”
"So what happens next?"
”Well, now Christianity is the official religion of Rome and everyone is happy. The concentration of military power, political power, financial power, and not least spiritual power is limited to the Emperor once again. The only difference is that instead of being both God and head of state himself, he is only head of state but is now seemingly following the same God as his people."
"With a few minor, or should we say quite major adjustments?”
"I'd say major."
”So that’s why the most brutal leaders of today all make sure they praise the lord before they announce that they’re going to send some poor kid off to shoot even poorer families in the Middle East?”
”Of course. You can bet that their true spiritual loyalties lie a lot closer to the more nocturnally orientated directions of faith, like with any true predator. But that is all kept safely within the disclosure of night, of course.”
”So it looks like they are all true Christians in public, but their private practises are of the darker arts?”
”They surely are.”
”Smart.”
"And once again everything is in its right place. The predators prey while the prey is busy praying.”
”Fancy sentence. Have you ever tried rapping?”
Mr. Friend just smiled.
They were walking from the coffee shop now. It was a beautiful, but cold day. They said goodbye, and Vix felt that his head was filled to the max with strange stories. Stories that might be great information, or just a heap of bollocks from a twisted old man.
Back at the Shelter he made his notes for the day. He felt far too knackered to do much of anything else, so he decided to keep the blogging short.
He logged in, and posted a picture he took of a sticker-piece on a lamppost down the road. It was an image of a holy-looking dude making some kind of announcement while holding up his right hand as if to make a warning. In his left hand he held a book. Underneath the image were the words:
THE APOCALYPSE HAS BEEN CANCELLED
Then he wrote:
Most probably, the Apocalypse has been cancelled.
”Sacred geometry, I said."
"As in a mix between Maths and Religion classes? Are you gonna go all Dan Brown on me now?"
"Quite. Take the Pyramid, for example, unlike anything you’ve seen in nature except in some crystal structures. As a symbol it sits on the far opposite end of chaos. It is indeed a most fascinating structure. Four sides at the base square. Four triangles merge in a fifth point at the summit. The perfect geometrical figure to express the number five. Made up of threes and the square root of four, which I take even your slumbering brain deep, deep within knows is two, which together with three, makes...”
”Five.”
”There’s a reason one uses ’he can’t even put two and two together’ as the perfect example to describe the ultimate stupidity, and not ’he can’t even put two and three together’. It would be too close to the core of the philosophy of five, where we find the pyramid as the central symbol, and for obvious reasons some people don’t want us to go there. At least not yet.”
”The philosophy of five?”
”Yes. Haven’t you noticed the amount of fives that surround you?”
”Not really, but all I have in my pocket is a fiver, if that’s what you mean?” Vix could tell Mr. Friend wasn’t up for much two-way communication today, as he was already mid-way throught his next sentence:
”Well, take the Pentagon building for starters, since you are so interested in power.”
”I’m not interested in power!”
”Yes you are. And it’s all penta-this and penta-that when it comes to the rulers of the New World, though no-one have really bothered to make any ’official’ explanation as to why they’re so obsessed with it. Then you have the five-pointed star - The Pentagram. ’Every man and woman is a star’, it has once been claimed. Visualise a human being standing upright with legs apart and arms outstreched. There’s your living, breathing five-pointed star. The five pillars central in the Muslim faith. The five most commonly known senses; sight, hearing, smell, touch and taste.”
”But hey! Isn’t this what weird people do? If you start seeing patterns of five everywhere, next thing you know it’s the funny-farm with a padlock?”
”You would be amazed at how many bright people are brought into custody on the background of a mental-health excuse.”
Vix wondered how Mr. Friend knew this, but got cut off before had the chance to make a comment.
”Then you can go on and spell the name Joshua in Hebrew for me.”
”You’re joking. How would I know how to do that?”
”If schools had the faintest interest in educating children and passing on real and valuable knowledge of our history, you would have had no problem with that. But I’ll do it for you; Yod, Hé, Shin, Vau, Hé.”
”Aha. Five letters. It’s a kind of magic! Who’s Joshua?”
”Jesus. Jesus Christ.”
”The Messiah dude? Get outta here! I wouldn’t have guessed that he would turn up here.” Vix tried to sound surprised in the most superficial way possible.
”You don’t seem to be taking this very seriously. Maybe you would like to take one of your five fingers on your right hand and pick your snotty little nose with it instead? It might be a more suitable illustration.”
”But hang on. You’re telling me Jesus Christ is in on the ’philosophy of five’ thing? Firstly I don’t even believe such a figure ever existed, it’s all hype. And secondly you’re sounding a bit too much like a spooky weirdo now. I preferred it when you talked about mass-media manipulation and world politics.”
”Divide and conquer.”
”Why do you say that?”
”They are all aspects of the same thing, and as long as you regard politics as separate from all this, you’ll never understand what is going on. There are even five aspects of the great power-machine you’re so in love with, too. Five great tools to obtain total control and keep people like you detatched from yourself and hold up the great illusion of this world.”
”Really? And they are?”
”Law, Military Force, Communication, Religion and Money.”
”And they’re all connected, of course?”
”They are all different faces of the same head. They are the tools you need in order to build the world pyramid. Would you like me to tell you more about the inner workings of religion without too many protests now?”
”For sure.”
”Christ is said to be representing the four elements of man; Spirit (Yod), Soul (Hé), Intellect (Vau) and Heart (Hé).”
”I might not be the sharpest of knives, but according to my mathematical skills that makes only four.”
”Ahh. The Brain. Such a useful tool. You see, these four letters alone make up the word Jahve, or Yehova if you’d like. Which I guess you’ll recognise as the god of the Old Testament.”
”Don’t know about that, but I do recognise him from ’Life of Brian’. Hilarious, that stoning scene.”
”Well, I’m glad Monty Python took upon themselves the responsibility of filling in the holes the educational system left out.”
Vix smiled, satisfied with de-railing Mr. Friend’s freight-train of thought.
Mr. Friend frowned and went on:
“But if we insert the letter Shin, representing the human free will, in the middle of Yehova, and thereby balance out the four elements of man with a guiding fifth, we’re left with the name Joshua – or Jesus. The Christ.”
”Dammit!”
”And this is where it all starts getting really interesting.”
”Really? I’m already quite entertained.”
”I haven’t got the faintest intention of entertaining you, Victor. You know how I feel about entertainment in general.”
Vix could see steam building, and added:
”Sorry. Info-tain me, then.”
”Whatever. The core of the knowledge that got mashed together with the whims of those who wrote the manuscript of what we call Christianity today, stems from what can faintly be viewed as natural mythology, or the so-called pagan beliefs of the past. The spiritual science of old.”
”Mashed together?”
”Let’s go back and talk about the Romans for a bit, and the way they built their regime of power.”
”Please.” Vix felt that he had to make himself as comfortable as possible to endure what was about to come.
”The Roman Emperor Gaius Julius Caesar was the most powerful political and military figure in our part of the world during the first century. It was under him that the old Roman Republic expanded into what history refers to as the Roman Empire. Much like we know from other empires of the past, the Emperor was given the status of a demi-god - the Divine Being’s core representative on Earth. This usually worked in the way that not only did the masses underthrow themselves to the sovereign military and political power of their ruler, but also accepted him as their spiritual leader, a position that - at times when pure brutality and law-enforcing met resistance in the public - proved extremely useful to keep things under control."
”So the same Emperor who laid down the rules of society also acted as the God of the people?”
”Which gave them a much harder time standing up against him, as it was a matter of standing up against their own beliefs – an inner force - not the external force of a dictator of flesh, blood and unjustified greed for power. Such a purely mortal force would have been much easier to disagree with, and for people to gather together and pick a fight with.”
"But all this kept people quiet and obedient?"
"When people realize injustice is being done to them they will sooner or later revolt against any oppression and violent law-enforcing, but when it comes down to challenging their own faith they tend to hesitate a whole lot more.”
”Makes sense.”
”This model had already proven to work very well. For the Chinese rulers, for example; the endless respect and fearful admiration that people had for their Emperor as both celestial and earthly ruler extended his power into the wildest dimensions. You can say that Julius Caesar had a few hundred years of political history to draw inspiration from already.”
”So why didn’t he just pass this power on, making his followers the new Gods? Didn't he run into trouble with his family also?”
”Faith. People slowly but steadily lost their faith in him. And in emperors in general.”
”You mean they were wisening up?”
”Sort of. You can only surpress the masses for so long, until their inner feeling of injustice pushes out of their bodies and into society, and then they most certainly will start organising themselves and eventually revolt against you. The struggle for power is always one of manipulating people to believe that what you tell them is more important than what they feel deep within their hearts is right for themselves and their surroundings. And in order to do this you need more than one tool.”
”So as people’s belief in the emperor as half-god deteriorated, he lost his power.”
”He did. And as a lot of people returned to their numerous versions of the small and simple belief-systems that had lived on in the shadows, the Empire started getting into a lot of trouble controlling the masses by law-enforcing alone. In addition, these alternative roads for enlightenment were systems that for the most part stemmed from man’s early observations of Nature – old pagan beliefs. Everything from the knowledge of the healing powers of herbs to the study of the movements of the celestial bodies that told them when to sow, when to harvest, and when to look for shelter when the storms started building up, once again became people’s guidelines.”
”They started listening to the Weather again, instead of listening to the Roman Emperor?”
”Exactly! The Weather, and a whole lot of other natural phenomena.”
”I guess it seems obvious that it got more difficult to rule when people moved away from worshipping the state leader and connected with nature and themselves instead. But I thought the Roman Empire lasted far longer than Caesar?”
”The Roman Empire actually started, or at least expanded into an Empire with Caesar. Before that it was merely known as the Roman Republic, and covered a far lesser geographical area with far less citizens. But they started getting into trouble keeping it all together as they expanded.”
”It was very big?”
”At its peak a few hundred years later the Roman Empire streched from Northern Africa through Egypt into the Middle east via Lebanon and Syria. It covered areas around the Black Sea, Asia Minor, Europe south of the Alps and all the way to Spain, Portugal, France, England and Wales. Most of the people living in this vast area were considered Romans, but when no-one was looking, most people proved very relaxed when it came to their loyalty towards Rome. It wasn’t a question of doing anything extra to stand up for their Emperor. And they all had different religious beliefs.”
”So it wasn’t a scenario of total, centralized control?”
”Not at all. Most people detested the prescense of the Roman soldiers, as most written documentation of the era testfies. And this left a lot of openings for spiritual and political revolutionaries to spread their ideas - the man historically referred to as Jesus from Nazareth being the most famous one today. For several reasons that I will get to in a moment.”
”So already Julius Caesar was struggling to keep it all together, but still you say they managed to keep their power for a few more hundred years, and even expand it?”
”Oh, they’ve managed to keep their power for far longer than that.”
”What do you mean?”
”As an example, let us fast forward into the early fourth century, when Emperor Constantin the 1st ruled from the city of the old Greek city of Byzantium."
"Never heard of it. Are they big on charter-tourism today?"
"Byzantium was re-baptised Nova Roma, soon to be called Constantinopel and today plainly referred to as Istanbul.
”That’s a lot of names for one city.”
”Constantin's predecessor, Emperor Diocletian, had spent almost a decade trying his best to eradicate the rapid growth of Christianity within the empire, as well as another big religion widespread in those days called Manichaeism.”
”Never heard of it, either. Kind of like the Scientology of the times?”
”Not really. I don’t think Manichaeism was a result of a wager between two pennyless science fiction authors.”
”Yeah, I heard about that. The guy who started Scientology did it to prove that he could start his own religion, and his mate put a bet on that he couldn't. I thought that story was just a myth, though.”
”Maybe it, as most myths go, is intended to illustrate the underlying workings of the subject in discussion by the use of more dramatic means. Anyway, let’s leave the bets between Hubbard and his pal Heinlein for now. Back to the Romans. The religious map of the great realm that the poor bugger Diocletian had his hands full with keeping together, was one of great fragmentation. In addition to Christianity and Manichaeism you had Zoroastrianism, Gnosticism and a lot of other, far smaller religions and belief-systems existing throughout the population of the Empire.”
”Much like a massively huge old-school New Age convention?”
”I guess you could call it that. It was a question of fragments of the same universal spiritual guidelines put into many different contexts for different purposes and intents. The only problem was that this made the gap between the state and people’s inner lives broaden, and this gave many small groups the courage to gather and stand up against Rome, something that gave the Emperor a really bad headache. A headache that in addition to his syphilis felt quite unbearable. So he tried, like simple people do, to use force to get rid of the problem.”
”He sent the po-lice on them?”
”Absolutely. But his police were licensed to kill and slaughter – as was the habit in those days.”
”Aren’t they still?”
”Not while people are looking, Victor. We’re not barbarians any longer.”
”Aha. Progress.”
”Progress.”
”But did it work out the way he wanted? Were people scared by his soldiers?”
”Certainly not. This approach never works, as history has shown us time after time. But it worked very well for Christianity. It spread like a fire. Not only was it now fuelled by the success of the uproar by the figure Jesus from Nazareth, who spoke freely of the need to revise and re-vitalise religion and start opposing the church and the Roman occupants, but it also grew stronger by the fact that by trying to destroy Christianity the Emperor seemed to be very afraid of it in the public’s eye. Quite like when President Nixon admitted to feeling so threathened by John Lennon and Yoko Ono by putting them under the surveillance of the FBI and trying to deport them from the US prior to the campaign of his second presidental election.”
”Did he, now? Never heard of that before.”
”You’ve probably never looked for it, then.”
”Not really, no. I only know Nixon from his other crimes.”
”Anyway, our soon-to-be emperor Constantin, who was a bright young fellow, saw all of Diocletian's troubles from the sideline and decided he wanted to become far more successful than his predecessor, as most young people decide when they realize their elders don't have full control. So when Constantin's time came, the first thing he did was to get rid of the competition, to put it simple.”
”What competition?”
”The other Emperor.”
”There was another one?”
”Oh, there were several emperors at times. The Empire of Rome almost fell to pieces towards the end of the third century, as there were around twenty emperors all claiming power of the Empire. But it ended up merely split in half through a system called the Tetrarchy back then. Diocletian ruled the eastern part, and Maximian ruled the western part. It was the intention to keep it this way, but when Diocletian resigned, the power was seized by one Galerius who basically held Constantin hostage for some time to prevent him from claiming power. Maximian still ruled the west at this point."
"Sounds as confusing as the politics of today, only there was more direct killing and torture going on."
"Not much has changed. The media are our new gallows and the game is less clumsy, but the inner workings have stayed the same. But enough of that."
"OK. Go on."
"Constantin managed to flee Galerius' arrest on the excuse of going to England to assist his own father in battle. Galerius let him go, hoping he would fall in battle while away. But Constantin succeeded in England and stayed there, continuing to work his way up to more and more power in the western Empire - by all means necessary. From forging his new titles when reporting back to Galerius on the status of things, to letting a couple of Frankish kings be ripped apart by wild beasts in the amphitheatre to everyone’s entertainment.”
”We’ve come a long way from that to Pop Idol, though. Don’t you think?”
”Have we, now?” Mr. Friend frowned, paused to sip his coffee, which must have gone ice cold bu now. Then he continued: ”By his hard work Constantin soon reigned most of the western part of the Empire. He changed his title to Augustus, which is latin for "majestic", and in this power also controlled one of the largest Roman armies. He eventually got rid of the western ruler Maximian by ordering his suicide, and also quite effectively got rid of another potential obstacle by killing Maximian’s planned successor, his son Maxentius while he was at it.”
”Sounds like an efficient guy.”
”Oh, he was. He had kept on building alliances all along the way by means of a couple of strategic marriages, one of them being Maximians’ daughter Fausta. When he felt his power had expanded sufficiently, he went on and did something of great genius; he teamed up with Galerius’ second in command Licinius, who he – needless to say - later went and had killed. But before this they put together ’the Edict of Milan’, a proclamation that all religions – including Christianity – was now allowed within the Empire.”
”So then I guess he got quite popular. At least more popular than the Emperor before him?”
”Of course. When he saw the effect this declaration had on his popularity with the people, he eventually went on and claimed that he himself also had become a true Christian now, something history has been quite insistent on making us believe was true in hindsight. He even declared that from now on Christianity was the official religion of the Roman Empire.”
”It wasn’t true?”
”Far from it. The ’first Christian Roman Emperor’ Constantin was a true follower of Sol Invictus, as most Roman Emperors before and after him had been.”
”I think I've read about that on the Web. Wasn’t that some kind of sun worshipping cult? Or do you mean the record label?”
”Sol Invictus was more like three sun-worshipping cults thrown into one. Although it could hardly be called a cult at all, as the ’official’ religion of the Roman Empire up till that point had been all such forms of Roman Paganism, in addition to the Imperial Cult that had held the Emperor himself divine. You can find a lot of mythical imagery from these religions printed all over the money of this period.”
”Oh, I thought we were talking kind of occult stuff?”
”Occult only means ’hidden’. And that’s central to the whole scheme of what happened later.”
”Sol Invictus went into hiding?”
”Not really. They just got adapted to the new popular ideas emerging amongst people. And that’s the true genius of it all. Sometimes you can hide things in front of people's own eyes. You just tell them to not look for it.”
”What do you mean they adapted?"
"They shuffled things around a bit. Made sure it looked like they were doing something else than what they actually did, but kept all the main ingredients intact."
"Like a re-edit?”
”Most probably like a re-edit. Whatever that is.”
”So why would Constantin pose as a Christian, if he really was a follower of Sol Invictus? He was the Emperor, he could still have done as he pleased for his personal beliefs.”
”Oh, he did. As I said the basic doctrine of Sol Invictus was based around three divinities thrown into one. Followers of the deities Mithras, El Gabal and Sol all were all associated with the cult, but all three of these beliefs were just based around basic ancient sun-worship and paganism, with all the sacrifices and rites that go with it. This is nothing new, just activities mankind have been pre-occupied with throughout the ages. Ever since the first individual on the planet started recognising the warming sun as its saviour and the night, filled with its predators and dangers, as the great darkness, this has been with us. It’s at the core of all the great ancient eastern religions, the meso-american ones, and in the belief-systems of ancient Egypt. It is at the core of our very beings.”
”The sun as the saviour. Might have been very different if we were nocturnal creatures, then. I almost never saw the sun during my teens, and only listened to dark and heavy music.”
”And that’s funny, but also quite essential here. If you are a predator you’re more likely to worship the night, as it will give you the cover you need in order to sneak up on your prey before you attack it, rip it apart and devour it. Your natural place in this world will give you a set of needs, and you’re very likely to be thankful to the universal mechanisms that fulfill those needs.”
”And the Roman Emperor Constantin, where was he in all this?”
”He was a man seeking power, and like all other power-seeking creatures he had to find the means of getting it, and then make sure he could keep it. The greatest power is held by the sun. At least that's how it seems when you're a mortal man with your feet on the ground."
"But everybody loves the sun."
"Yes. Most of the time. But the sun is also ruthless. It would be sure to kill you if you approached it. The sun is the sun, and no place for man. So for Constantin, when you had a new religion - Christianity - based on compassion and non-violent co-existence with your fellow man spreading like a fire among the people. The same people he intended to reign over, it was not good news at all.
"I guess it would be like launching the idea of fair trade to a unscrupulous stock-broker and expect him to say ’oh, that’s great, I’ll just stop chasing profit and start concentrating on justice immediately’.”
”Which would be not very likely. Unless this would be an unnaturally gifted stock-broker, who instead would say ’great idea’, and then start figuring out how he could make the most profit out of people’s hunger for justice.”
”So you embrace the idea...”
”And start making it work for your own means.”
”You do a re-edit, and fill the floor with some old junk tune.”
”If you say so. So now we had the great new ’Christian’ Emperor, who – in the same year as he launced the ’Edict of Milan’ and declared himself a true Christian – also poisoned his own son Crispus and killed his wife Fausta by throwing her alive into boiling water.”
”Ah, the compassion.”
”The same compassion with which he then made some very smart adjustments to the new official religion of Rome. Firstly, he changed the celebration of the birth of Christ from January 6th to December 25th – coincidentally the same day he and all followers of Sol Invictus already celebrated the winter solstice. He changed the Christian Sabbath – which up until now had followed the jewish one on Saturday – to Sunday - the holy day of Sol Invictus. Then he sent his mother Helena around the Empire restoring churches and giving back treasures that had been seized when Christianity was outlawed, to show his newfound kindness of heart.”
”Ahh. The generousity.”
”He also had his mother bring back pieces of ’the True Cross’ from the Holy Land, the very cross on which Jesus had allegedly been crucified, and erected it in his Nova Roma as a relic of protection.”
”This guy makes artists like Bill Drummond look like total amateurs.”
”He then chose the Labarum as the symbol of this new official Roman religion, a symbol he had his soldiers engrave on their shields when they went into battle with his aforementioned competitor to power, Maxentius, many years earlier. He claimed that he had had a dream or vision from his Christian God that told him that ’under this symbol you will reign’. It consisted of the ancient cross of the Zodiac, where the sun is the center and the two lines represent the equinoxes, with the letter P inserted above it – all enclosed in a circle.”
”Like that P-X thing on the Pope’s forehead?”
”The very same symbol. The P represented the Patriarch, in this case the Emperor himself, reigning with the power of the sun. All within a closed circle, probably to symbolize the fact that all the power should be restrained to the Patriarch and his circle of power.”
”Wow. If all this is true, why didn’t people see it?”
”Do people see anything at all? Ever? They were probably too busy watching an execution or some other form of entertainment of the times.”
”You really don’t like entertainment.”
”No I don’t. I prefer the Truth anytime.”
"So what happens next?"
”Well, now Christianity is the official religion of Rome and everyone is happy. The concentration of military power, political power, financial power, and not least spiritual power is limited to the Emperor once again. The only difference is that instead of being both God and head of state himself, he is only head of state but is now seemingly following the same God as his people."
"With a few minor, or should we say quite major adjustments?”
"I'd say major."
”So that’s why the most brutal leaders of today all make sure they praise the lord before they announce that they’re going to send some poor kid off to shoot even poorer families in the Middle East?”
”Of course. You can bet that their true spiritual loyalties lie a lot closer to the more nocturnally orientated directions of faith, like with any true predator. But that is all kept safely within the disclosure of night, of course.”
”So it looks like they are all true Christians in public, but their private practises are of the darker arts?”
”They surely are.”
”Smart.”
"And once again everything is in its right place. The predators prey while the prey is busy praying.”
”Fancy sentence. Have you ever tried rapping?”
Mr. Friend just smiled.
They were walking from the coffee shop now. It was a beautiful, but cold day. They said goodbye, and Vix felt that his head was filled to the max with strange stories. Stories that might be great information, or just a heap of bollocks from a twisted old man.
Back at the Shelter he made his notes for the day. He felt far too knackered to do much of anything else, so he decided to keep the blogging short.
He logged in, and posted a picture he took of a sticker-piece on a lamppost down the road. It was an image of a holy-looking dude making some kind of announcement while holding up his right hand as if to make a warning. In his left hand he held a book. Underneath the image were the words:
THE APOCALYPSE HAS BEEN CANCELLED
Then he wrote:
Most probably, the Apocalypse has been cancelled.
Monday, April 13, 2009
Chemical fire
The night sky was dark and unfriendly above the city.
The Stealth fighters were flying low, like soulless alien bats. They were looking for something - hunting for some poor, defenseless prey like an ancient flying reptile would be chasing warm blood and mammal flesh.
He could see the burning oil-wells at the outskirts of the city. Black trees of rabidly growing smoke were stretching their deadly branches towards the darkened sky.
The green, sick flame of some unknown chemical substance screamed and hissed its prayer to the demons of old. No warmth in the flames. It seemed like they burned with the chill of Death.
Another Stealth suddenly appeared just above the roof of the building behind him. Soundless and black. He ducked, even if he had the feeling they couldn’t see him, as much as they ever tried.
It slid across the rooftops for a few seconds, then hit the afterburner and took off into the night with the thunder of its engines shaking the ground and the buildings nearby. The sparks and flames from the plane were lighting up the streets, and he could see people there. Men, women, kids.
Families.
Scared.
Hiding.
They couldn’t see him.
He was invisible.
The Stealth fighters were flying low, like soulless alien bats. They were looking for something - hunting for some poor, defenseless prey like an ancient flying reptile would be chasing warm blood and mammal flesh.
He could see the burning oil-wells at the outskirts of the city. Black trees of rabidly growing smoke were stretching their deadly branches towards the darkened sky.
The green, sick flame of some unknown chemical substance screamed and hissed its prayer to the demons of old. No warmth in the flames. It seemed like they burned with the chill of Death.
Another Stealth suddenly appeared just above the roof of the building behind him. Soundless and black. He ducked, even if he had the feeling they couldn’t see him, as much as they ever tried.
It slid across the rooftops for a few seconds, then hit the afterburner and took off into the night with the thunder of its engines shaking the ground and the buildings nearby. The sparks and flames from the plane were lighting up the streets, and he could see people there. Men, women, kids.
Families.
Scared.
Hiding.
They couldn’t see him.
He was invisible.
Monday, April 6, 2009
Beyond Good, Evil and The Weather
Vix got up earlier than usual this Sunday. He was hoping to catch an earlier train out to the Village, but soon realised he'd be most likely to spend the usual small eternity trying to find a pair of matching socks from his laundry bag.
It was the same old story.
He didn't have too many clothes, just a selection of good t-shirts, some jeans, a couple of hoodies and a warm knitted sweater that he would put on on really cold days, then get totally claustrophobic and pull it off just as he was about to leave the house.
He had just about enough underwear. Nothing too fancy. After all, the meaning of any piece of underwear’s life was to make its host feel as comfortable as possible.
But then it was the socks.
He hadn't counted them, but there must have been a couple of hundred pairs by now.
Every time he did his laundry at the Laundromat up the road, he'd always return with everything heaped inside an old orange bicycle courier bag. This way, whenever he would need any clean stuff, he'd just grab it directly from the bag (except for the warm sweater, which would always lie in the corner where he'd thrown it after trying it on, then deciding it was far too claustrophobic to wear).
Whenever he'd get down to try finding a pair of socks he would almost never find a match, but instead spend 15-20 minutes looking through every single one. As this pissed him off thoroughly he'd always try to get rid of the problem by buying a new 5-pack at the market whenever he passed by on weekends.
Of course this only added to the confusion.
Even lately, when he'd decided he would only buy very colourful pairs, so they would easily stick out in the bag, it didn't really work out. The only thing it resulted in was that now he had such an amount of bright and colourful socks that the contents of the laundry bag looked like some kind of psychedelic puke, which only added to the whole messy situation.
He pulled out a yellow and violet striped pair from the clown barf and put them on.
It seemed he would miss the train he hoped to catch by getting up early anyway now.
”Did you see the thing in the paper today?”
Mr. Friend sipped his steaming hot black coffee and glanced above his glasses with raised eyebrows at Vix.
”The oil thing?”
”No, the maize thing.”
”You mean the corn thing?”
”Yes, the maize thing.”
”No, I didn’t.”
”The price of maize has finally started moving up because of the demand for it for bio-fuel production. Can you imagine what will happen now that it’s more tempting for farmers to sell off their crops for bio-fuel production than for food-production?”
”Eh, I suppose that’s exactly what they’ll do, then?”
”Most probably. And as they start selling larger and larger shares of their production to this sector, using maize for food will soon be considered a pure luxury with the price levels we’re going to see soon, and then what with the poorer nations who rely heavily on importing masses of it for food?”
”They’ll be in even deeper shite than usual?”
”As you so poetically put it, my young friend.”
”But how can they get away with it?”
”What do you mean?”
”How can these things be decided upon, and carried through by the people who are controlling this trade? The global corporations. Corrupted politicians.”
”Oh, this has been decided upon a long time ago. The minute the first merchant uttered the phrase ’free market’ to no public protest, all decisions behind these ongoing events today had already been taken.”
”It’s the same old story, then? A global culture of greed eating our world like a cancer. No stopping it. The blinded masses following the sheep-clad wolves to the edge of the cliff, where they’ll all be certain to meet their final deaths?”
”Ooh, we’re in a bit of a lousy mood today, are we?”
”Well, I just think those responsible for these decisions should suffer for what they’ve done. If it was up to me I’d make sure every single one involved in this scheme would die a very slow and very painful death – preferrably while being forced to face images of the pain they’ve inflicted on others.”
”And why would you do that?”
”Because they’re evil, that’s why!”
Mr. Friend looked at Vix as if he was thoroughly entertained by the answer.
”There it is again. Evil. Why on Earth is everybody so damned preoccupied with good and evil around here?" He didn't stop and wait for an answer. "I’ll tell you why. Because it is this preoccupation with good and evil that makes people so gullable. And being gulled, one can always blame someone else, and avoid personal responsibility for every little thing. Why can’t I hear people say ’divide and conquer’ as often as they say ’good and evil’, it’s a far more to the point cliché.”
”So now you’re telling me there is no good or evil either?”
”Of course I’m not telling you that. Only an idiot would tell you that, and I can’t imagine you’d be the kind of lad who would spend hours on end discussing serious matters with an idiot every Sunday, would you?”
”Of course not.”
”I’m simply asking why you are so preoccupied with this categorisation of good and evil, like everyone else? There’s a million other dialectic forces in the Universe that’s far more interesting than these two worn out concepts – and far more essential in order to understand what’s really going on.”
”Like what?”
”Day and night, male and female, life and death, home and away. And order, of course. Order and disorder, or chaos if you’d like.”
”Day and night. Order and chaos. Wow! I feel extremely enlightened.”
”Tread easy, my dear Victor. Arrogance and irony are two human capacities that are carefully balanced out by intelligent virtues like openness and sincerity - important tools you will have to rely on in order to evolve and attain any real knowledge of the slightest little thing. And you don’t want to miss out on your chances of evolving by being an ignorant little prick, do you?”
”No, sorry, it's just too tempting. Please go on.”
”You see, most people who decide things in this world. Big things. Those much talked about people with 'real' power whom you regard so highly. Most of these people don’t give a damn about good and evil during a normal day at the office. It doesn’t even strike them that anybody out there does care about such a silly concept. What they do care about on the other hand...”
”...is order and chaos, I guess you’re about to tell me, cause home and away it surely ain’t.”
”So it is, my bright young friend, so it is. But you shouldn't write off home and away so quickly. Never underestimate the importance of silly games and the thrill of a staged battle between different tribes. This stuff is ancient. Do you know who 'invented' football?"
"Haven't got the faintest idea."
"The Maya indians."
"No shit? Where they a British colony?"
"No. But never mind. We'll get back to them another time, I'm sure."
"So forget good and evil and don't underestimate football, what's your next big revelation?"
"The real battle in this world at the moment is between order and disorder, where order is defined by anything that is controllable by the human will, and disorder has to be defined as any kind of order that’s incomprehensible by the human intellect.”
”Like the weather.”
”Exactly. Like the weather. That's the real deal, and that's why people are so scared of it, especially now that it's acting a bit strange and even more unpredictable than before."
"Yeah. But most people still believe the greatest battle in society is one of ’the Law’ versus ’the Outlaw’, in my opinion. Like a western movie, or America's reasons to go to war."
"Sure. That's one of the biggest ’good versus evil’ myths that are around, but of course this is complete nonsense. Do you really think one the most popular tv-series in the world during the last decade would evolve around the lives of criminals if this was case? Don't you think it would be classified information?"
”TV-series? You mean like ’The Sopranos’, or something?”
”I do. The whole key to its popularity is that the scenario describes the lives of organized criminals. Or at least criminals struggling to stay in control of their criminal affairs. It’s not a game of chaotic, unpredictable crazies doing whatever pleases them at any time, or moving where the wind blows. They're not dangerous types at all.”
”Do you watch it?”
”Hell, yes. It’s a fantastic show!”
Vix tried to imagine Mr. Friend on the couch with a can of beer and a bag of chips, deeply engaged by a tv-show about New Jersey mafiosos battling with their marital problems and unruly children, but had to lay the thought to rest in order not to laugh out loud and make Mr. Friend turn all grumpy.
”In the real battle, ’the Law’ and ’Organized crime’ is fighting on the same side - against the real enemy.”
”Which is what? ’Sex and the City’?”
”Amusing suggestion, but in a twisted sense still quite spot on. The power of sex is probably the one human force that no-one can seem to come up with a recipe for total control of. So I wouldn’t hesitate to list it at the top end of the column that opposes law and order.”
”So now you tell me that world politics can be explained by watching the most popular tv-soaps? Sure you’re not just a raving old drunk with a great dress-sense and a talent for words?”
”Why do young people always want things to be so complicated? Do you really think the royals never let off smelly farts, or that politicians and ’the power people’ don’t watch the same tv-shows as the man and woman in the street?” Mr. Friend’s voice had become slightly high-pitched and a bit silly-sounding.
Vix wondered why he would get offended on behalf of 'royals' and 'power people', but soon let the thought lie.
”But sex apart. I was actually more pointing towards phenomenon such as disorganized crime, and foreign regimes with different laws than those of the dominant law enforcers of this world. There’s nothing more frustrating than unpredictable crime and unpredictable entities of power to those that prefer to be in control of the big issues.”
”So badly organised criminals. The weather, and sex are their real enemies?”
”Well, yes. The two latter subjects are some of the most talked about issues across the globe as we speak. And they have been for thousands of years. We are talking front pages every other day. The first category is usually far too scary to mention in public, although madmen like Manson turn up from time to time and make a lot of headlines.”
”Yeah, Marilyn is totally aw’some”, Vix drawled back in his badly executed impersonation of a broad american accent.
"Charles, Victor. Charles Manson. Go and have a look on your beloved Internet."
"Aha." Vix pretended to not know the difference.
”But actually sex is a real beast to the people who want control. Every attempt has been made to degrade sex - initially by making it shameful, 'wrong' or 'sinful' to the faithful citizen - and thereby less powerful. The Catholic Church thought they were onto a solution for a few hundred years, but even they seem to have started giving up this strategy now. After every measure taken - from burning their most vital objects of desire on a stake, to banning the use of condoms in modern times, and thereby making poor people scared of their sexuality due to the possible consequences of having another hungry child - sex still seems to continue to live a life of its own in the whole of society, like a river flooding every dike."
Vix tried to picture this. It left him with a strange tingling sensation.
Mr. Friend went on, ”Your sexual power is your own personal creative power in its most basic form. It’s one of the most powerful tools you’ve been given in life, thoughtfully bundled with the freedom of choice. A fantastic creative force, and probably the strongest you’ll ever have at your hands during a lifetime, maybe apart from the instinctive will to survive.”
”On one hand I guess you could be onto something there. But I don’t get it. Society is full of sex. It seems like it’s the only thing you see in the media, in fashion, in films. Why?”
”Well, I imagine the solution for now is to try to give the masses an overdose of the stuff, so they start getting a little bored of the whole thing. If you can't stop it, then try to make it cheap, casual and 'no big deal'. But this new strategy also seem to include to keep on focussing on those who’ve attempted to suppress their sexuality long enough so that they eventually burst, and go and do something terrible to some innocent victim somewhere. Sexually motivated crime can put most sensible souls off the whole subject of sexuality. Not that most people have any time left for being very erotic in their daily lives, anyway - being the slaves of time and money that they’ve now become. But there still seems to be hope here. It still has a force, at least amongst the young. People just need to become aware of this force, and start to use other aspects of it to express their personal power and free will. It could help change things.”
”’Fuck for the environment’ next?”
”Not exactly what I meant, but it has already been done.”
”Where? Surely in Sweden? Or Germany, or somewhere like that.”
”Norway, actually, but never mind.”
”Weird shit.”
”Not that weird, when you think about it.”
”Why?”
”Because all environmental questions are somehow linked to the weather, and the weather is the other great matter in the same category of uncontrollable forces, as I told you. And the weather in itself is even more scary to the power-hungry than people, even if they were fully in touch with their sexual power.”
”And why is that?”
”It is because the weather hints at something bigger than man. Something uncontrollable by - and - bigger than man.”
”Double scary.”
”Oh, far more than double scary, Victor. Weather is God! And such an unpredictable God is very scary, if you’re just a small man of flesh and blood, with both a deteriorating hairline and sexual drive, but still wants to rule the world.”
”I thought the idea of God was essential in order to rule the world. The one who managed to monopolize on God would probably hold the key to rule all nations, wouldn't he? Being the owner of www.god.com or God™ would be a great asset, right?"
"Surely, but you're talking about a man-made God. The myth of God. Not a dangerous, real, natural force-God."
"Oh, come on. It's all just bollocks, anyway. The whole idea of God is nothing but a well-designed system of thought to keep people obedient. In the world today, some religious fundamentalists have the ’patent pending’ status on God, whereas others make loud protests with the ’no you don’t, you oppressing faithless dogs’-rap. If one of them managed to break the code to win that great battle of who’s God’s best mate, there’d be no problem to rule the world, would there?”
”Yes, yes. That's all very good. But that’s still just the idea of God as in the ’man-made God of organized religion’. This concept has been working quite well in the past, no doubt. But I’m sure no-one really fears that old character anymore. Not when they’re at peace with themselves in a lonely room. I believe the whole world has made their personal faith quite a secular affair. At least when no-one's looking."
"I hear you say that, but I'm not sure I believe it."
"Don't underestimate people, Victor. These days most people can see the real behaviour of the men of the Church throughout history shining through. In our time information flows more freely, and it must be quite transparent to most that these belief-systems have been used by a chosen few to surpress, rather than enlighten the masses."
"You think God is losing his grip on people, aren't you?"
"Well, at least he doesn’t seem to strike as much awe in people as he once used to. I’ve even heard he’s starting to go soft on natural horrors like homosexuality, with letting openly gay bishops come to the surface. That’s not very much like him, is it?”
”Really? This must be in France.”
”No, Norway again, actually.”
”Ok, but I actually think you’d be surprised at how many still put their faith in this ’man made God in his image and pretended it was the other way around'-figure if you started watching more than ’The Sopranos’ and ’Sex and the City’”, Vix said, and felt great about himself.
”Touché.” Mr. friend smiled and scratched his white and almost perfectly trimmed beard. ”But let's focus more on the other concept of God, if you’ll excuse me. The one I started this conversation with, the one that is able to put such an amount of fear in even the most cynical global corporate leader that he goes at great lengths to make sure all his otherwise waterproof business contracts contain at least one special clause”
”Which might be?”
”What to do in the event of ’Force Majeure’.”
"Force Majeure?"
"An 'act of God'. Natural catastrophes, war, famine. Uncontrollable stuff like that."
”An intervention by this all-empowering weather-God of yours?”
”Exactly. The fearsome concept of a universal structure that humans are unable to fathom, and have to file under X."
"You watch far too much telly."
Mr. Friend ignored him.
"You see, in order for any power-structure to function well, it is dependent on that every one of its building blocks are made of solid material, and that they behave in a predictable way. It’s not so much a question of a chain containing a weak link, but more a question of whether all your bricks are made of solid rock, and not crumbling sandstone. This is essential to understand before you start building any kind of power-structure.”
”Bricks? Power-structure? Like a tall building full of powerful people or something?”
”Or a big corporate company. Not so much like any tall building, but more like a pyramid-shaped one, with all the power centralized at the top.”
Vix felt uneasy at the mention of a pyramid-shaped structure, but couldn't tell why he should be.
”One day you have to tell me more about pyramids.”, he said, vith a badly camouflaged hint of anxiety in his voice.
He looked at the old clock on the wall, which was placed next to a trememendously lousy attempt at an expressionistic representation of a bus-stop he thought he could recognize from down the road. He loved the painting, and decided that he would have bought it for a silly sum of money, if he’d had the privilege of parting with silly sums of money. Most of all, he'd like to do so in order to piss off the art market by making this untalented bugger a wanted artist, which in turn would make sure the rich and famous soon had their walls crammed with these horrendous creations.
It was five o’clock.
”Gotta dash.”, Vix said.
He put his jacket on, gave a firm military salut to Mr. Friend, who shook his head and then returned his attention to the paper he’d been reading.
”Till next time.”
Mr. Friend turned a page in his paper, and didn’t look up as Vix left.
"Till next time.", he answered.
The journey back was just like journeys back often are, quite uneventful and unexciting, and somehow much shorter than the way to somewhere.
He decided he didn’t want to try and find out exactly why at this moment in time. He felt tired.
The city had started getting the Christmas decorations up, and there seemed to be a million sparkling lights hovering above the streets when he looked out the blurry bus window with half-closed eyes.
It reminded him of a sample in a track by The Orb, and of the words of an American President.
He preferred being reminded of The Orb, he thought, and dozed off.
The bus driver kept kicking him on the leg even after he woke up at the end of the route. He realised he had to walk back to his neighbourhood, and wasn't pleased at all.
Back at the shelter he got into some fresh underwear, put the kettle on, and did his notes for the day.
Then he wrote the following on the blog:
Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the messy job of cleaning up the Earth after the rich and prosperous have left the party.
He scratched his chin, and eventually added;
If the meek are still around by then, and there’s anything left for them to clean up. (If the whole malarkey hasn’t gone down the cosmic drain – or just exploded like the Death Star.)
He posted the track ”Solaris” by Emmanuel Tegel - it sounded appropriately cosmic, like the blurry Universe of the Christmas lights through the bus window on his way home, and he enjoyed the soothing spaciousness combined with those naive melodies.
He logged off, and had a last cup of tea for the night.
Soon Vix was floating in space.
It was the same old story.
He didn't have too many clothes, just a selection of good t-shirts, some jeans, a couple of hoodies and a warm knitted sweater that he would put on on really cold days, then get totally claustrophobic and pull it off just as he was about to leave the house.
He had just about enough underwear. Nothing too fancy. After all, the meaning of any piece of underwear’s life was to make its host feel as comfortable as possible.
But then it was the socks.
He hadn't counted them, but there must have been a couple of hundred pairs by now.
Every time he did his laundry at the Laundromat up the road, he'd always return with everything heaped inside an old orange bicycle courier bag. This way, whenever he would need any clean stuff, he'd just grab it directly from the bag (except for the warm sweater, which would always lie in the corner where he'd thrown it after trying it on, then deciding it was far too claustrophobic to wear).
Whenever he'd get down to try finding a pair of socks he would almost never find a match, but instead spend 15-20 minutes looking through every single one. As this pissed him off thoroughly he'd always try to get rid of the problem by buying a new 5-pack at the market whenever he passed by on weekends.
Of course this only added to the confusion.
Even lately, when he'd decided he would only buy very colourful pairs, so they would easily stick out in the bag, it didn't really work out. The only thing it resulted in was that now he had such an amount of bright and colourful socks that the contents of the laundry bag looked like some kind of psychedelic puke, which only added to the whole messy situation.
He pulled out a yellow and violet striped pair from the clown barf and put them on.
It seemed he would miss the train he hoped to catch by getting up early anyway now.
”Did you see the thing in the paper today?”
Mr. Friend sipped his steaming hot black coffee and glanced above his glasses with raised eyebrows at Vix.
”The oil thing?”
”No, the maize thing.”
”You mean the corn thing?”
”Yes, the maize thing.”
”No, I didn’t.”
”The price of maize has finally started moving up because of the demand for it for bio-fuel production. Can you imagine what will happen now that it’s more tempting for farmers to sell off their crops for bio-fuel production than for food-production?”
”Eh, I suppose that’s exactly what they’ll do, then?”
”Most probably. And as they start selling larger and larger shares of their production to this sector, using maize for food will soon be considered a pure luxury with the price levels we’re going to see soon, and then what with the poorer nations who rely heavily on importing masses of it for food?”
”They’ll be in even deeper shite than usual?”
”As you so poetically put it, my young friend.”
”But how can they get away with it?”
”What do you mean?”
”How can these things be decided upon, and carried through by the people who are controlling this trade? The global corporations. Corrupted politicians.”
”Oh, this has been decided upon a long time ago. The minute the first merchant uttered the phrase ’free market’ to no public protest, all decisions behind these ongoing events today had already been taken.”
”It’s the same old story, then? A global culture of greed eating our world like a cancer. No stopping it. The blinded masses following the sheep-clad wolves to the edge of the cliff, where they’ll all be certain to meet their final deaths?”
”Ooh, we’re in a bit of a lousy mood today, are we?”
”Well, I just think those responsible for these decisions should suffer for what they’ve done. If it was up to me I’d make sure every single one involved in this scheme would die a very slow and very painful death – preferrably while being forced to face images of the pain they’ve inflicted on others.”
”And why would you do that?”
”Because they’re evil, that’s why!”
Mr. Friend looked at Vix as if he was thoroughly entertained by the answer.
”There it is again. Evil. Why on Earth is everybody so damned preoccupied with good and evil around here?" He didn't stop and wait for an answer. "I’ll tell you why. Because it is this preoccupation with good and evil that makes people so gullable. And being gulled, one can always blame someone else, and avoid personal responsibility for every little thing. Why can’t I hear people say ’divide and conquer’ as often as they say ’good and evil’, it’s a far more to the point cliché.”
”So now you’re telling me there is no good or evil either?”
”Of course I’m not telling you that. Only an idiot would tell you that, and I can’t imagine you’d be the kind of lad who would spend hours on end discussing serious matters with an idiot every Sunday, would you?”
”Of course not.”
”I’m simply asking why you are so preoccupied with this categorisation of good and evil, like everyone else? There’s a million other dialectic forces in the Universe that’s far more interesting than these two worn out concepts – and far more essential in order to understand what’s really going on.”
”Like what?”
”Day and night, male and female, life and death, home and away. And order, of course. Order and disorder, or chaos if you’d like.”
”Day and night. Order and chaos. Wow! I feel extremely enlightened.”
”Tread easy, my dear Victor. Arrogance and irony are two human capacities that are carefully balanced out by intelligent virtues like openness and sincerity - important tools you will have to rely on in order to evolve and attain any real knowledge of the slightest little thing. And you don’t want to miss out on your chances of evolving by being an ignorant little prick, do you?”
”No, sorry, it's just too tempting. Please go on.”
”You see, most people who decide things in this world. Big things. Those much talked about people with 'real' power whom you regard so highly. Most of these people don’t give a damn about good and evil during a normal day at the office. It doesn’t even strike them that anybody out there does care about such a silly concept. What they do care about on the other hand...”
”...is order and chaos, I guess you’re about to tell me, cause home and away it surely ain’t.”
”So it is, my bright young friend, so it is. But you shouldn't write off home and away so quickly. Never underestimate the importance of silly games and the thrill of a staged battle between different tribes. This stuff is ancient. Do you know who 'invented' football?"
"Haven't got the faintest idea."
"The Maya indians."
"No shit? Where they a British colony?"
"No. But never mind. We'll get back to them another time, I'm sure."
"So forget good and evil and don't underestimate football, what's your next big revelation?"
"The real battle in this world at the moment is between order and disorder, where order is defined by anything that is controllable by the human will, and disorder has to be defined as any kind of order that’s incomprehensible by the human intellect.”
”Like the weather.”
”Exactly. Like the weather. That's the real deal, and that's why people are so scared of it, especially now that it's acting a bit strange and even more unpredictable than before."
"Yeah. But most people still believe the greatest battle in society is one of ’the Law’ versus ’the Outlaw’, in my opinion. Like a western movie, or America's reasons to go to war."
"Sure. That's one of the biggest ’good versus evil’ myths that are around, but of course this is complete nonsense. Do you really think one the most popular tv-series in the world during the last decade would evolve around the lives of criminals if this was case? Don't you think it would be classified information?"
”TV-series? You mean like ’The Sopranos’, or something?”
”I do. The whole key to its popularity is that the scenario describes the lives of organized criminals. Or at least criminals struggling to stay in control of their criminal affairs. It’s not a game of chaotic, unpredictable crazies doing whatever pleases them at any time, or moving where the wind blows. They're not dangerous types at all.”
”Do you watch it?”
”Hell, yes. It’s a fantastic show!”
Vix tried to imagine Mr. Friend on the couch with a can of beer and a bag of chips, deeply engaged by a tv-show about New Jersey mafiosos battling with their marital problems and unruly children, but had to lay the thought to rest in order not to laugh out loud and make Mr. Friend turn all grumpy.
”In the real battle, ’the Law’ and ’Organized crime’ is fighting on the same side - against the real enemy.”
”Which is what? ’Sex and the City’?”
”Amusing suggestion, but in a twisted sense still quite spot on. The power of sex is probably the one human force that no-one can seem to come up with a recipe for total control of. So I wouldn’t hesitate to list it at the top end of the column that opposes law and order.”
”So now you tell me that world politics can be explained by watching the most popular tv-soaps? Sure you’re not just a raving old drunk with a great dress-sense and a talent for words?”
”Why do young people always want things to be so complicated? Do you really think the royals never let off smelly farts, or that politicians and ’the power people’ don’t watch the same tv-shows as the man and woman in the street?” Mr. Friend’s voice had become slightly high-pitched and a bit silly-sounding.
Vix wondered why he would get offended on behalf of 'royals' and 'power people', but soon let the thought lie.
”But sex apart. I was actually more pointing towards phenomenon such as disorganized crime, and foreign regimes with different laws than those of the dominant law enforcers of this world. There’s nothing more frustrating than unpredictable crime and unpredictable entities of power to those that prefer to be in control of the big issues.”
”So badly organised criminals. The weather, and sex are their real enemies?”
”Well, yes. The two latter subjects are some of the most talked about issues across the globe as we speak. And they have been for thousands of years. We are talking front pages every other day. The first category is usually far too scary to mention in public, although madmen like Manson turn up from time to time and make a lot of headlines.”
”Yeah, Marilyn is totally aw’some”, Vix drawled back in his badly executed impersonation of a broad american accent.
"Charles, Victor. Charles Manson. Go and have a look on your beloved Internet."
"Aha." Vix pretended to not know the difference.
”But actually sex is a real beast to the people who want control. Every attempt has been made to degrade sex - initially by making it shameful, 'wrong' or 'sinful' to the faithful citizen - and thereby less powerful. The Catholic Church thought they were onto a solution for a few hundred years, but even they seem to have started giving up this strategy now. After every measure taken - from burning their most vital objects of desire on a stake, to banning the use of condoms in modern times, and thereby making poor people scared of their sexuality due to the possible consequences of having another hungry child - sex still seems to continue to live a life of its own in the whole of society, like a river flooding every dike."
Vix tried to picture this. It left him with a strange tingling sensation.
Mr. Friend went on, ”Your sexual power is your own personal creative power in its most basic form. It’s one of the most powerful tools you’ve been given in life, thoughtfully bundled with the freedom of choice. A fantastic creative force, and probably the strongest you’ll ever have at your hands during a lifetime, maybe apart from the instinctive will to survive.”
”On one hand I guess you could be onto something there. But I don’t get it. Society is full of sex. It seems like it’s the only thing you see in the media, in fashion, in films. Why?”
”Well, I imagine the solution for now is to try to give the masses an overdose of the stuff, so they start getting a little bored of the whole thing. If you can't stop it, then try to make it cheap, casual and 'no big deal'. But this new strategy also seem to include to keep on focussing on those who’ve attempted to suppress their sexuality long enough so that they eventually burst, and go and do something terrible to some innocent victim somewhere. Sexually motivated crime can put most sensible souls off the whole subject of sexuality. Not that most people have any time left for being very erotic in their daily lives, anyway - being the slaves of time and money that they’ve now become. But there still seems to be hope here. It still has a force, at least amongst the young. People just need to become aware of this force, and start to use other aspects of it to express their personal power and free will. It could help change things.”
”’Fuck for the environment’ next?”
”Not exactly what I meant, but it has already been done.”
”Where? Surely in Sweden? Or Germany, or somewhere like that.”
”Norway, actually, but never mind.”
”Weird shit.”
”Not that weird, when you think about it.”
”Why?”
”Because all environmental questions are somehow linked to the weather, and the weather is the other great matter in the same category of uncontrollable forces, as I told you. And the weather in itself is even more scary to the power-hungry than people, even if they were fully in touch with their sexual power.”
”And why is that?”
”It is because the weather hints at something bigger than man. Something uncontrollable by - and - bigger than man.”
”Double scary.”
”Oh, far more than double scary, Victor. Weather is God! And such an unpredictable God is very scary, if you’re just a small man of flesh and blood, with both a deteriorating hairline and sexual drive, but still wants to rule the world.”
”I thought the idea of God was essential in order to rule the world. The one who managed to monopolize on God would probably hold the key to rule all nations, wouldn't he? Being the owner of www.god.com or God™ would be a great asset, right?"
"Surely, but you're talking about a man-made God. The myth of God. Not a dangerous, real, natural force-God."
"Oh, come on. It's all just bollocks, anyway. The whole idea of God is nothing but a well-designed system of thought to keep people obedient. In the world today, some religious fundamentalists have the ’patent pending’ status on God, whereas others make loud protests with the ’no you don’t, you oppressing faithless dogs’-rap. If one of them managed to break the code to win that great battle of who’s God’s best mate, there’d be no problem to rule the world, would there?”
”Yes, yes. That's all very good. But that’s still just the idea of God as in the ’man-made God of organized religion’. This concept has been working quite well in the past, no doubt. But I’m sure no-one really fears that old character anymore. Not when they’re at peace with themselves in a lonely room. I believe the whole world has made their personal faith quite a secular affair. At least when no-one's looking."
"I hear you say that, but I'm not sure I believe it."
"Don't underestimate people, Victor. These days most people can see the real behaviour of the men of the Church throughout history shining through. In our time information flows more freely, and it must be quite transparent to most that these belief-systems have been used by a chosen few to surpress, rather than enlighten the masses."
"You think God is losing his grip on people, aren't you?"
"Well, at least he doesn’t seem to strike as much awe in people as he once used to. I’ve even heard he’s starting to go soft on natural horrors like homosexuality, with letting openly gay bishops come to the surface. That’s not very much like him, is it?”
”Really? This must be in France.”
”No, Norway again, actually.”
”Ok, but I actually think you’d be surprised at how many still put their faith in this ’man made God in his image and pretended it was the other way around'-figure if you started watching more than ’The Sopranos’ and ’Sex and the City’”, Vix said, and felt great about himself.
”Touché.” Mr. friend smiled and scratched his white and almost perfectly trimmed beard. ”But let's focus more on the other concept of God, if you’ll excuse me. The one I started this conversation with, the one that is able to put such an amount of fear in even the most cynical global corporate leader that he goes at great lengths to make sure all his otherwise waterproof business contracts contain at least one special clause”
”Which might be?”
”What to do in the event of ’Force Majeure’.”
"Force Majeure?"
"An 'act of God'. Natural catastrophes, war, famine. Uncontrollable stuff like that."
”An intervention by this all-empowering weather-God of yours?”
”Exactly. The fearsome concept of a universal structure that humans are unable to fathom, and have to file under X."
"You watch far too much telly."
Mr. Friend ignored him.
"You see, in order for any power-structure to function well, it is dependent on that every one of its building blocks are made of solid material, and that they behave in a predictable way. It’s not so much a question of a chain containing a weak link, but more a question of whether all your bricks are made of solid rock, and not crumbling sandstone. This is essential to understand before you start building any kind of power-structure.”
”Bricks? Power-structure? Like a tall building full of powerful people or something?”
”Or a big corporate company. Not so much like any tall building, but more like a pyramid-shaped one, with all the power centralized at the top.”
Vix felt uneasy at the mention of a pyramid-shaped structure, but couldn't tell why he should be.
”One day you have to tell me more about pyramids.”, he said, vith a badly camouflaged hint of anxiety in his voice.
He looked at the old clock on the wall, which was placed next to a trememendously lousy attempt at an expressionistic representation of a bus-stop he thought he could recognize from down the road. He loved the painting, and decided that he would have bought it for a silly sum of money, if he’d had the privilege of parting with silly sums of money. Most of all, he'd like to do so in order to piss off the art market by making this untalented bugger a wanted artist, which in turn would make sure the rich and famous soon had their walls crammed with these horrendous creations.
It was five o’clock.
”Gotta dash.”, Vix said.
He put his jacket on, gave a firm military salut to Mr. Friend, who shook his head and then returned his attention to the paper he’d been reading.
”Till next time.”
Mr. Friend turned a page in his paper, and didn’t look up as Vix left.
"Till next time.", he answered.
The journey back was just like journeys back often are, quite uneventful and unexciting, and somehow much shorter than the way to somewhere.
He decided he didn’t want to try and find out exactly why at this moment in time. He felt tired.
The city had started getting the Christmas decorations up, and there seemed to be a million sparkling lights hovering above the streets when he looked out the blurry bus window with half-closed eyes.
It reminded him of a sample in a track by The Orb, and of the words of an American President.
He preferred being reminded of The Orb, he thought, and dozed off.
The bus driver kept kicking him on the leg even after he woke up at the end of the route. He realised he had to walk back to his neighbourhood, and wasn't pleased at all.
Back at the shelter he got into some fresh underwear, put the kettle on, and did his notes for the day.
Then he wrote the following on the blog:
Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the messy job of cleaning up the Earth after the rich and prosperous have left the party.
He scratched his chin, and eventually added;
If the meek are still around by then, and there’s anything left for them to clean up. (If the whole malarkey hasn’t gone down the cosmic drain – or just exploded like the Death Star.)
He posted the track ”Solaris” by Emmanuel Tegel - it sounded appropriately cosmic, like the blurry Universe of the Christmas lights through the bus window on his way home, and he enjoyed the soothing spaciousness combined with those naive melodies.
He logged off, and had a last cup of tea for the night.
Soon Vix was floating in space.
The Black&White Man
Three days ago I met the Black&White Man.
He said, ”So ... we meet again?”; but I told him I honestly couldn’t remember the initial event that now made this a recurrance.
He said that was fine, but he insisted that we’d met once, long ago, when we were crossing the great ocean as passengers on my father’s ship.
I told him ”ahh...”, and shook his hand, although my memory of him was still totally blank.
The Black&White Man was a fascinating creature.
He had milky-white skin, like when you looked into a bright, dense cloud from an airplane window.
Perfectly set in his semi-Asian looking (and very handsome) face were two infinitely deep eyes, like shiny black marbles.
They reminded me of the starry night sky I once had watched through a round rooftop window, when I was little and still noticed such things.
His whole being seemed to possess a shiny quality, like he’d just been polished, and I reckoned he was very powerful, but kind.
I didn’t know what he wanted from me, but now that I had met him I didn’t regret it.
It might turn out to be useful to know him.
He said, ”So ... we meet again?”; but I told him I honestly couldn’t remember the initial event that now made this a recurrance.
He said that was fine, but he insisted that we’d met once, long ago, when we were crossing the great ocean as passengers on my father’s ship.
I told him ”ahh...”, and shook his hand, although my memory of him was still totally blank.
The Black&White Man was a fascinating creature.
He had milky-white skin, like when you looked into a bright, dense cloud from an airplane window.
Perfectly set in his semi-Asian looking (and very handsome) face were two infinitely deep eyes, like shiny black marbles.
They reminded me of the starry night sky I once had watched through a round rooftop window, when I was little and still noticed such things.
His whole being seemed to possess a shiny quality, like he’d just been polished, and I reckoned he was very powerful, but kind.
I didn’t know what he wanted from me, but now that I had met him I didn’t regret it.
It might turn out to be useful to know him.
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