home | what's new | other sites | contact | about

Word Gems 

exploring self-realization, sacred personhood, and full humanity

Franchezzo

return to the main-page article on "Hell" 

Elenchus. If you’ll allow a long introduction to a main point, there’s something I’d like say.

Kairissi. We serve at your pleasure, Dear.

E. I was watching a Tom Selleck movie, Ike: Countdown to D-Day.

There’s a scene with the General and his staff taking a short break from their preparations for the major landing. And they’re watching a movie, Shakespeare’s Henry V and the battle of Agincourt of 1415.

Henry V (1944) - Laurence Olivier

They comment that Henry too was engaged in battle-prep concerning northern France.

K. An interesting coincidence.

E. But the similarity ends there. Henry is no savior for the world against totalitarianism; in fact, he’s a prime perpetrator.

K. Shakespeare’s Henry V, as is the case with many of his writings, contains phrases which have become famous as stand-alone statements. For example, “we happy few,” is often referenced in literature; also, “band of brothers” is even more commonly known.

E. I marveled as I considered the context of these well known expressions. King Henry employs them to stir his men to patriotic feeling. He’s trying to gin them up with concepts of solidarity, fraternity, and fighting for a higher good. But this was just trash-talk. Henry was just a tin-star Dear Leader manipulating the affections of his true-believers, but not to make the world a better place. Instead, Henry’s goal was the aggrandizement of Henry, and nothing more. His fine little speech, laced with platitudes, was just Machiavellian drivel.

K. It’s one more example of Dear Leader’s “mask of piety,” his attempt to cloak malfeasance in some semblance of high-mindedness.

E. This image of Henry propagandizing his own troops so disturbed me that I decided to remind myself of his record. I went to Simon Schama’s dvd, History Of Britain...

...and reviewed the hundred years or so prior to Henry’s reign – going back to the latter 1200s; the brutal Edward I and his campaign against the Scots and William Wallace, popularized in the movie, Braveheart.

And then, for the next 125 years or so, you had one monarch after another outdoing the atrocities of earlier ones, with all efforts directed toward amassing more money plus power and control over people.

K. Little wonder historians Will and Ariel Durant speak of the long dreary iteration of history’s barbarities.

E. Yes, long and dreary, never ending. And I thought about all this chaos in reference to Franchezzo’s studied observation, that the entire purpose of the bleak edifice we call the Dark Realms is, in fact, a gigantic classroom, so to speak, all designed to expunge “the lust for evil” from the soul by “grinding it out.”

K. You know, Elenchus, this is a great example of needing to get to a higher mountain to really see what’s happening in all this misery. From a ground-level perspective, from the atheistic view, it all seems be total disarray and pandemonium. But, from that lofty perch, we begin to catch a glimpse of the reality.

E. It’s that photo we’ve talked about, the hurricane from outer space: from downtown Miami, looks like a mess...

... but way up there, it’s a finely-tuned, well-orchestrated symphony.

K. I’ve thought about this, and have asked myself: If I were in charge of this whole process, could I do better? I’ve looked at it this from every angle, and the problem is, how do you take an entity with free will, and turn him or her into a mature individual who does the right thing from one’s deep center. Now that’s a pretty tall order, and it’s really hard, and I can’t see a way of doing it without it getting very muddy at times.

E. (sighing) We need the ego, the sense of “I-ness,” to become persons in our own right; and yet, during the immature phase, when it doesn’t know it’s linked to God and abundance, it will try to take to itself as much as it can to allay its own fears of “I don’t have enough” because “I am not enough.”

K. And sometimes during world history, when power is concentrated in the hands of a few, it can get pretty dark, and very dangerous. But “upper management” has seen fit to allow this mayhem because the eventual goal of becoming a mature son or daughter of God, in receipt of all attendant joy, is so wonderful that the temporary misery, even by those who have suffered the most, will be counted as “worth it” in order to attain the eventual prize.

E. Franchezzo gives us a profound concept – “the lust for evil ground out of the soul”. I’ve been aware of this idea for some time, but I think his phrasing is especially instructive.

K. As we’ve said, most people blame God for the evil in the world; and we can understand how this happens if vision is limited. But, I have to say, for any thinking person, who really understands the difficulties in putting all this together, I can’t come up with a better way of doing all this -- when creatures with free choice are involved.

E. And what would you say it really means to “grind” evil out of the soul?

K. I think it means that we’re allowed to enter into evil. No one stops us from doing the bad thing. It needs to be that way, or we’d harbor an unrealistic view of evil. Part of us would say, “If only I could get back to the real pleasure that evil affords, then I’d be happy, but they won’t let go near it.” That’s the immature myopic view.

E. “I want to eat the poisoned candy.”

K. And when we think that way, we’ll never grow up into an entity that can be trusted with the awesome “firepower” possessed by the ancient Spirit Guides. We might be smiling and polite, but eventually the temptation to “get to the really good stuff” which evil is imagined to contain would subvert us and cause us to sink into dysfunction.

E. There’s no easy way of doing this, of attaining this deep wisdom. And I’m glad you mentioned the “firepower.” Most people don’t realize just how dangerous the ancient Spirit Guides could be if they let themselves go. These are the real movers-and-shakers, the masters of the universe. But, of course, they would never do that – because, in their years of spiritual minority, they themselves entered into evil, ate of it to the full, and now they’re forever soured by the taste and want nothing to do with it.

K. You can’t achieve that kind of self-management and self-discipline by attending church, memorizing scripture, or posting platitudes on your bathroom mirror. It doesn’t work that way. It’s more like Lateece used to say to us: “I’m now qualified to teach others about the deleterious effects of evil – because I've known it all so well.”

E. (sighing)

K. And I think we might close our discussion here by reminding everyone what’s really going on in our present world with the current worldwide march toward totalitarianism.

E. We do this every couple generations or so – I’m just worried that one of these times we might not be able to pull ourselves back in the ninth inning with a neo “Normandy invasion” to save us.

K. And there’s no guarantee that we might not stupidly wander off the cliff of civilized living into a new Dark Age – it’s not as if this hasn’t happened before, and God loved those people as much. But if it does happen, we can know that it's not because God is sleeping or doesn't care or has gone off somewhere. Oh, no, that’s not it at all. This is casebook, studied, laissez-faire management style.

E. Or, as Emperor Claudius said, "Let all the poison in the mud hatch out."

K. And if we go from bad to worse in this present totalitarian “classroom” of our own devising – as no one is forcing us to pervert ourselves – then our generation will have the opportunity to enter into the experience of evil, in a manner and to a degree that will fit our diseased materialistic mindset and stupor.

E. Class is in session. And we must write our own tests and are required to grade them, as well.