8:32 PM 2/6/2020 Years ago I had a public affairs blog on Livejournal called “The Abyss”. I deleted it, and my website, when I moved to Chicago in 2008. Tonight I’m resurrecting the Abyss as a way to deal with the Trump impeachment and the sense of impending doom that I have about the United States. Back then I was commenting on public affairs, learning about what it means to take a public stance as a writer. This time I’m doing something different. I’m trying to save my soul. I’m lost in the emotional chaos of a political system I no longer believe in. I believe in the principles of the constitution, but I no longer believe justice is being done in this country. Our healthcare system is immoral. Our economy is unworkable in the long run. Our entertainment is psychic pollution. Our leaders are hapless frauds and failures. The only thing that redeems this horror for me is the fact that I know we all have souls and we all move inexorably toward the release of death and a brighter world afterwards. Our nation is a failure, and yet I know that people taken individually can be better than the country that oppresses them. I know that over the course of my life I have achieved a little liberation from suffering through spiritual practice. So this is an experimental post to see what kind of effort I can sustain in writing, to see what can be done with the mental chaos and anger I experience when I read social media posts about the horror of politics. I know that conscience demands I take some kind of stand on the affairs of the world, but I don’t quite understand my point of view. So I’m going to take a risk and begin to reach into darkness once again, hoping to find that shamanic key to “to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race.”
The very next step, of course, is to get down to specifics. Is Trump good or evil? Is it any of my business if he is or not? I am 50 years old and I have no children, nor ever will. What business of mine is the future of this sad, decadent world? And yet my life calls forth a response to the emptiness of our shared society. The very concept of conscience has been broken, polluted and debased by mass media.
Conscience to me means that all souls go to a higher world where the truth is revealed. I’m going to write my opinions of what that otherworldly truth might be as they apply to the politics and culture of this one.
I don’t want to be a part of the culture wars. I want to move past them to a higher world. But the only way out is through.