Thursday, April 15, 2010

Seven Sins: Pride

A cultural sponge that bathes itself on many different fluids can not help itself from absorving every culture that it gets in touch with.
When submerged if squized to make room for the new environment new things will be be brought to its attention.

A bit late after holy week and since that is one of my oldest fluids, lets examine in turn each one of the 7 deadly sins.
At the end of the day Kieślowski did the 10 commandments, he was far more of a catholic than I am.


Pride:

As I try to make a habit I take a trip to my fathers home town around Easter.
Traditionally its one of the most important dates of the christian callendar, it also is when the weather gets better.
In Valencia, my first region, the smell of the air with the orange blossom is just magic, and just one week after easter, there is the day of San Vicent, or Saint Vincent if we insist in translating.
His life and works may make for an interesting piece, later on but lets not diverge.

As part of this trip I persevered with another old habit that I had given up on, going to church with my parents.
My spirituality has been a bit of a roller-coaster in the last few months, but I have recently decided that intellectual honesty is more important.
Since I happened to become briefly in touch with Nietzche, my outlook on religion has not been the same.
I have to confess many sins to him, the first of all is my liking for beer, but I dare to mention him as a core reference in what intellectual honesty is.
The man, not without his flaws, did dive at depths of what was the establishment at his time and tore down a whole chunk of what was the predominant culture.
It is a pitty is not better understood by most people.

Going back to my little church visit.
I found myself in the same church where I took my holy comunion for the first time, with much changed in terms of decoration.
Such as archangels carying the shield of the town.
And listening to the Gospel of Saint Mark in which after Jesus has resureected and appears to the disciples, there is Thomas which is left without seeing him.
All the other disciples tell him what they saw, and Thomas, clearly states that he needs to see for himslef.
Thomas could have been a scientist, and I am thankful for his presence in the scriptures, but not for the use and interpretation of this account by the priest of my fathers town.

Thomas refused to believe without seeing, was depicted as a restricted man, as one that can not comprehend from the account of the other disciples that Jesus is God re-incarnate and is alive.
Well sorry, all the others did see him, and hence they believed. Why could Thomas not ask for the same chance, which is, to have access to your own facts.
When data or information is transmitted, we all are aware that certain channels can deform and twist the content of that data.
Knowing ourseleves the channel we trust the least are other people, so when information comes from other people we look and who and what they are saying with the same care that we would look at a scientific instrument.
Now, that is not being restricted, that is just being curious and aware of ones situation is.
So the person that thinks and wants to know is punished, if surrounded by morons.
Hold on to that thougth.

Of course if we all demanded, now more than 2000 years later, to see the proof of resurection the church would have a problem.
Since that proof is long gone.
Also looking for such proof started in the middle age one of the most cruel virulent and mindless periods of the Western civilasation.
Lets just not go there again, there is enough trouble in the middle east.

My fathers town priest, followed then on one knotch further, and there is where I was having serious trouble paying credit to my ears.
Not only was Thomas restricted in his brain cpacity, as we where all for not believing without seeing, but it was our pride that prevented us from embracing the mistery that was presented to us.

This is where I want to kill. Not in the literary sense of the term of course, in the figurative one.

So first having access to your own facts is something that derives from being restricted, from wanting to know more about something and make your own decision, and then as if that was not bad enough pride is the deadly sin that takes us there.

Well I must certainly be on my way to a slow and painful afterlife.

If this way of thinking and operating which goes against the teachings of the church itself.
I mean, Are we not supossed to use all of our tallents?
If my talent is to be an iquisitive idiot, I will be a bit less of an idiot after a while, if people let me of course.

The worst part of it all is when the meme gets extended to the rest of the society.
A friend of a friend has recently joined one of the local news papers, she has a lot of experience in communication and has even run her own communications company in the past.
She now finds herslef being employed by a absolute group of morons that consider her to be unworthy the information that she requires to do her job.

Believe without seeing, work without knowing, and what ever happens make sure that that pride of yours stays well down otherwise you will have a serious problem, you will roast in hell, or even spend time in the purgatory of unemployment before you make it there.

It was one of my principles, to always do your work well, and as part of that to take pride in what you do.
Now if pride is a bad thing things get started on a slow lippery slope of not doing a thing, of not caring, and of having whole countries grind to a halt.
I believe that is call Sloth, and is also a deadly sin.
I refuse for that to happen, or at least for that to happen to me, that is why I stay out of my country, that is why I exile myself, because I am a siner, and the first of the sins I confess is pride.

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