We’ve got been meditating on gratitude in latest DMs. The peculiar faith being pushed by sure Silicon Valley billionaires at present in very excessive locations in American politics strikes me as being very missing in both pleasure or gratitude. However ever so massive in visions of apocalypse and destruction.
On studying the 4 lectures on the antichrist delivered by Peter Thiel behind closed doorways in San Francisco two months in the past, I didn’t see any point out of gratitude or pleasure therein. The identical is true within the message and method of Mr. Musk and his visions, of which one among his dearest appears to be to desert Earth for Mars, the place, apparently, he thinks he will likely be a happier man.
Each these males wield nice energy in our nation at this time. Thiel is the patron to the vp of the USA, having put $15 million into his Ohio Senate race that lifted him from obscurity to the Senate. Final summer season, he satisfied Donald Trump to make him his vp. If Trump leaves the presidency as a consequence of well being points, whether or not psychological, bodily, or each, Vance inherits the place. Thiel, already a first-rate presidential whisperer for positive, is obsessed by the antichrist archetype (although unwilling to debate me about it).
Musk, as we all know, is already accountable for the homicide of not less than 600,000 folks in Africa by denying them USAID, which was actually saving lives by offering AIDS medicines and in addition meals for probably the most hungry. His fellow billionaire, Invoice Gates, put it bluntly: “The richest man on the planet is killing the poorest youngsters of the world.”
Such folks, fairly unaware of both gratitude or pleasure, produce other issues on their minds and of their hearts. They’re decided to finish democracy and change it with a physique politic designed by and for their very own. The present SCOTUS is clearly on their facet.
Materialism does that to folks and their souls. Little doubt that is one cause Jesus cautioned that the very rich will discover it tougher to enter a kingdom of justice and peace than a camel passing via a needle.
Catholic monk Thomas Merton had sturdy issues to say to these whose utopian visions are projected onto outer area, a la Elon Musk’s. Shortly earlier than the primary man landed on the moon, he supplied this warning: Even when people can fly, so what? There are flying ants. Even when man flies all around the universe, he’s nonetheless nothing however a flying ant till he recovers a human heart and a human spirit within the depth of his personal being.
Moreover, What can we acquire by crusing to the moon [or Mars] if we’re not capable of cross the abyss that separates us from ourselves? That is a very powerful of all voyages of discovery, and with out all of it the remaining should not solely ineffective however disastrous.
I worry that Thiel, Musk, Trump and different billionaires pushing for displacing a wounded democracy with a rustic run by and for billionaires are nothing greater than flying ants bringing a few “disastrous” future for humanity and the Earth itself. Simply as Merton prophesied. Why?
As a result of they’re fearful males afraid of a very powerful voyage of discovery, that which separates us from ourselves. Every of them convey their unattended father wounds to the physique politic. And produce about an apocalypse and finish of the world for all.
Merton, who died a few 12 months after he wrote these phrases, is now deceased. Musk will in the future be lifeless, Peter Thiel additionally, Donald Trump additionally. Demise is a reminder that one’s life, the best reward we’re given, has each a starting and an finish.
What items can we select to go away behind in that interval? Items that endure, items that uplift, items that supply pleasure and justice for others, together with probably the most needy? Items of appreciation?
In any other case, as Merton tells us, we’re nothing however flying ants. Did the universe do its work in bringing our species ahead after 14 billion years of gestation simply to convey two-legged flying ants into the world? Irrespective of how a lot cash and holdings one (quickly) clings to?
Banner Picture: Dropping humanity within the pursuit of superhuman perfection. Photograph by Gabriella Clare Marino on Unsplash
Queries for Contemplation
How do you discover “the abyss that separates us from ourselves”? Do you agree that it’s the most necessary of all voyages and that with out it catastrophe threatens? What if Merton’s recommendation delivered 55 years in the past had been heeded and humanity had put as a lot funding into exploration into our internal area because it has into that of outer area?
Associated Readings by Matthew Fox
A Means To God: Thomas Merton’s Creation Spirituality Journey, pp. 121f
Christian Mystics: 365 Readings & Meditations
Trump and the MAGA Motion as Anti-Christ
Meditations with Meister Eckhart: A Centering E book
Ardour For Creation: The Earth-Honoring Spirituality of Meister Eckhart
The Tao of Thomas Aquinas: Fierce Knowledge for Arduous Occasions, pp. 41f.
Sheer Pleasure: Conversations with Thomas Aquinas on Creation Spirituality, pp. 57-188
Authentic Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality
Creation Spirituality: Liberating Items for the Peoples of the Earth
A Spirituality Named Compassion: Uniting Mystical Consciousness with Social Justice
