Living as an eco-freak
costs a lot
and
won't save the world
Living as a penitent
costs nothing
and will save
the world
Tapping the 30 October issue of "La
Dépêche du Midi" (The South's Dispatch) I remind myself of a
discussion with a dyed-in-the-wool environmentalist: Salsifis
(Black Salsify). This is not really her name, but I don't want to
embarrass Salsifis.
To start with she spoke with cocky
humor,
— Your Revelation
is just horseshit, said Salsifis! And they don't come any more
outdated! God was away with the fairies when he wrote the message. Only
ecology, but not religion, is planning the world's future.
— It's
important, I replied, to cut down carbon and noxious quanta in the air,
toxins in
soils, rivers, in rivers and in food. This is as wise as washing your
hands, brushing your teeth and streetsweeping the city, but the
pollution you've just talked of is not fatal. THE ONLY
POLLUTION FATAL TO
MANKIND: SIN.
Salsifis shrugged. I kept talking,
— Did the word sin
get you
shrugging? Well, let's say evil
instead! Or let's say lies, selfisness,
individualism, contempt, greed,
theft, etc., which
together are definitely some of the causes of global pollution from an
ecological standpoint.
— Let's suppose you're right,
said Salsifis! But
don't go
away thinking that law, police and the courts can prevent lies,
selfishness, couldn't-care-less attitude, the polluters' every possible
vice. Only law and courts can keep global pollution from spreading by
heavily punishing and taxing the polluting manufactures.
I cut off Salsifis,
— And the polluting manufacturers get
back the tax
money by charging the retailers and consumers for it. Living as an
eco-freak costs a lot (I anticipated the headline of "La Dépêche du
Midi" by a few years). Laws and taxes can increase the cost of living,
but can't depollute the earth, because pollution will forever develop
faster
then depollution. THE
ONLY DEPOLLUTING FORCE AND ONLY PATH TO GOOD:
SPIRITUAL LIFE.
— Religion again?!
— No! Living a spiritual life
is just having
a soul.
Whether a soul is noble and beautiful or it is nonexistent. If a potent
number of men have a soul,
the world is to change (Rev of Arès 28/7).
— I've got a soul
just as all of
people do, Salsifis retorted.
— You may have a soul,
but I can't
assess this hypothesis. According to The
Revelation of Arès the only way of being sure you've got a
soul
is giving up sin
in all conscience and putting good
into practice in all conscience, in other words, being a penitent.
THE ONLY PROCESS OF GOOD IS
PRIVATE;
IT IS PENITENCE.
Salsifis sniggered.
— The word penitence,
I added without approving of Salsifis's snigger, is usually
misundertsood, because people can't help but seeing only what religion
has left in it, that is, some force against evil through remorse and
contrition, because it's death that religion mostly has in mind.
But what spiritual life has in mind is life. Faith, not law, is the
best telescope to sweep the happy earth's horizon and penitence
is the
best trekking toward happiness. I mean creative penitence,
that The Revelation of Arès
redeems. By this penitence
man recovers beauty (Rev of Arès
12/3), joy and festive mood
(30/11), happy change of private life (Rev
of Arès
30/11) and of the world (Rev of Arès 28/7).
Penitence
gives back to the God that any good man
is made (2/12) the image and likeness of his
Creator (Genesis
1/27). In other words, penitence,
but not environmentalism, enables man to save himself, save the world
and even re-create the world.
— Doing Good?
That's the
project of ecology. Therefore your penitence
somehow is akin to ecology, said Salsifis.
— No, it is not, I stated,
because ecology doesn't believe in spiritual man, that is also a free
man (Rev of Arès 10/10). Ecoly
tells the citizen, "I Ecology have decided on the environment good for
you and the environment bad for you and, as you might well decide on
something different, I impose it on you by law and by tax..." Ecology
is just politics. It sees only man as psycho-biological matter, which
needs to be protected from its own immediate noxious demons (inasmuch
as the noxious demons are indeed not the very demons of the authorities
in place).
— But law can't force any man
to become
spiritual. Ecology can force a man to be protected from industrial
poisons.
— By industry you mean man's
industry, that
is, mankind itself. You cannot keep mankind from inventing new things
and having more and more outputs, because it's forever
increasing in number, and you can't keep it from producing reasonably
priced things for its poor people, therefore from polluting as
production goes along. Not to mention the excessive cost
of what little ecology
realizes. There's no such thing as an absolute solution to global
happiness through a special management of the processes of industry,
farming, etc. The only solution consists in creating a new human
society, a spiritual one, which contrary to popular opinion is possible
with time: It will take
more than four generations (Rev of Arès 24/2). After
Samuel, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Hosea, Joel, Zechariah, it was John the
Baptist who relaunched the Penitence
project: Be
penitent so that the kingdom of Good, which is very close at hand (for
it is in your own hearts) will come (and replace the system)! (Matthew
3/2). Sheer simplicity always short-circuits laws,
controls, the screen of
earthly complicated matters behind which the power, whatever, lives and
thrives in
Palestinia and elsewhere. The power had John the Baptist
arrested and eliminated (Matthieu
14/1-11). A few months later Jesus, who was likewise
preaching the direct return to Good
through penitence,
was also arrested and eliminated (Matthew
26/47-27/55, Mark 14/43-15/39, Luke 22/47-23/44). Now, you
environmentalists would have sat in the councils of Herod, of the
sanhedrin and of the Romans in those days.
— This
shows that law and its forces are instantly stronger than faith and love,
said Salsifis, but what can really happen at times other than instant
ones? How good is the bravery and sacrifice of a man of faith of love
in distant
prospects of salvation?
— Faith is as valuable as life.
Where there's life, there's
hope; similarly where there's faith there's hope. But faith turns
absolutely valuable when it keeps to an absolute, that is, conscious choice
of good, which
rectifies Adam's
old choice
of evil (Rev of Arès 2/1-5). There's no faith but
faith in a distant invisible future. This is the grand and heroic
(Rev of Arès
xxxv/4-12) side of faith, for which we have to stir mens'
consciences all over the world. Herod, the Sanhedrin, Pilatus...into
those powers two prophets, whose weapon was nothing but Truth
(Rev of Arès 28/7), threw
a scare, which showed only the inability of religion and politics to be
conscious of a anything beyond the surface of events, just as wolves
are unable to consider life around them beyond their own hunger and
impulses. Politicians and environmentalists behave likewise today. The
earthly powers set their very brief time against the
dimensionless time of
spiritual Life that
aims for the kingdom
of Good (22/14) beyond
time. This is why the Creator gives the good men, the ones
with souls,
an afterlife which keeps them, even when considered as dead in
earthmen's eyes, capable of slowly helping change the world (Rev of Arès
28/7) until they rise from the dead (Rév d'Arès 31/11-13) on
the Day when
the Good wins
against the Beast
(22/14). Jesus, when he appeared in Arès in 1974,
featured the brilliant demonstration of the aftherlife, of the souls' contribution
to the world's ascent
toward the Saint's Hights. To sum up, penitence is the
uttermost ecology.
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