Unfortunately, any time I've ever taken some sort of personality test at various points of time in my life -- as a schoolkid, a collegiate, a psychology major, a psychology patient (a few times on that one), and as a curious human being living in the modern virtual world -- the results always concluded that I am a 'thinker.' Or that I think too much, over-analyze, spend too much time stuck in my own head, doing too much thinking and not enough acting. And that I'm either overly critical, too sensitive, intolerant of incompetence and imperfection, manipulative and occasionally an unrepentant, unapologetic, obsessive narcissist. That being said, for those of you who believe that man was made in God's image, then logic would dictate that God too is, in short, a selfish, calculated, perfectionist prick. Or that God is at least capable of being that way.
My latest objects of obsessive thinking have been those nasty little esoteric concepts surrounding the nature of God and man. Is there a God? If so, is God a loving God? Did God create man in God's image like it says in the bible? Does God hold man in higher regard than the lower animals like it says in the bible?
My default setting on these types of questions, naturally, is that all of those concepts combine to form one big, steaming pile of childish bullshit. Concepts created and written down by human beings with their own motives and agendas in order to persuade the ignorant masses, through fear and false hope, to follow them straight down humanity's long, twisted road of good intentions straight down into the Hell that this planet has been consistently devolving into since the beginning of humankind.
I recently saw the new movie 'Noah,' which is a very interesting interpretation of the famous biblical story about what happened the last time things on Earth were in such a dire state -- allegedly. God simply murdered all the humans except Noah and his family and the innocent ones (i.e., the lower animals) in a great flood -- allegedly. Then we were given a chance to start over and try again, at which time humanity once again immediately proceeded to turn this planet to shit with due haste. All sorts of wonderful things started to happen again. Epic wars that lasted for centuries, the introduction of money into society, famines, pandemic diseases that wiped out whole generations, the slaughter of innocents, intractable civil wars, and so on and so forth. On and on and on, century after century.
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| God |
I mean, Christ, the fucking Holocaust just happened 70 years ago -- the most impossibly evil chapter in the history of history JUST fucking happened, relatively speaking. An entire country (Germany) of supposedly civilized people, devoutly followed an obviously psychotic, deeply troubled lunatic (Hitler), and methodically created an actual murder factory in order to annihilate six million innocent people (the Jews). They also murdered a few gypsies, homosexuals and mentally ill folks, but the primary stated purpose of Hitler's Germany was to dehumanize, enslave, starve, torture, steal from and very carefully murder six million innocent human beings. Why? Because of jealousy, misdirected rage, ignorance, and, of course, money. And the Jews are supposed to be the 'chosen ones.' Chosen for what? Perpetual isolation, alienation, oppression and murder every few years?
Now, as a Jew and a direct descendant of Holocaust survivors, I obviously take the particular matter of the Holocaust very seriously and very personally, so I will spend a bit more time on the matter. For something like the Holocaust to happen in a modern civilization, it takes an entire world to literally look the other way. While little children were sent into the gas chambers, the free world did nothing. Even the United States, that great hypocritical promoter of equality and freedom for all mankind, did NOTHING until 1944 -- talk about too little too late you lazy, selfish, greedy Yankees.
The Holocaust is the most troubling event for me to reconcile with the concept of a good, loving God. Remarkably, many of the Jews held onto their faith while they slaved and starved, waiting to die in the death camps. There are many stories of hope and faith and courage, even though these people knew they faced certain murder. I don't understand it. It was a favorite pasttime of the Nazi guards to say to the Jews on their way into the gas chambers, "Where is your God now?"
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| Children of the Holocaust |
Some like to cling to the belief that it was such hope and strength that allowed the few survivors to somehow actually survive and make it out alive. There are others, such as the famous Holocaust survivor, Nobel Laureate, and esteemed writer Elie Wiesel who did not believe this to be the case. Because the brutal reality is that most of even those strongest, most devout and brave prisoners of Germany's concentration camps were also murdered. Wiesel says that the only logical reason that some managed to survive was due to one thing and one thing only -- LUCK. Luck. Nothing else.
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| A Nazi murdering a Jewish woman and her child |
So, for example, while my paternal grandfather watched his young wife and son being fed into the gas chambers at Auschwitz, he then had the 'luck' to survive another two years in the camps and somehow made it out alive. Two years of daily unimaginable horror. When he was liberated at the War's end in 1945, he shortly thereafter met my grandmother -- who also survived due to luck (she escaped a Polish ghetto because an SS guard happened to turn his head in distraction for a few seconds too long) -- and they were soon married and gave birth to my father in Belgium in 1947. They emigrated to the United States a couple of years later and ultimately made it to Toronto, Canada, where they worked hard and became quite prosperous and successful -- from a financial standpoint. But my grandparents were haunted day and night -- tortured by their experience -- every single day for the rest of their long lives.
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| A Nazi guard trying out his new firearm. |
According to the science of epigenetics, the collective trauma of my grandparents was imprinted onto the DNA that was passed down to my father. As the firstborn grandchild in my family, I too inherited a portion of that trauma -- it is literally a part of my genetic code -- a part of my identity. These traumatic bits express themselves in varying ways and degrees. For example, my father has felt a deep, unrelenting pain in his heart for his whole life as a result. He also inherited the 'survivor' mentality -- a persistent, obsessive ambition and drive to succeed in life at all costs -- because my grandparents taught him that he must be successful, he must build his own empire, and that he must never stop building because everything can be taken away in the blink of an eye.
My experience has been different. I inherited the ambition without the drive -- the necessary drive to succeed without the true willingness to work hard enough to build my empire. I was fortunate to have a very privileged childhood and young adulthood. I had every opportunity a child could have growing up as a kid in America in the booming 1980's and 1990's. I was blessed to have a good education, and I went to school for as long as I could in order to avoid the 'working' world. It's true -- I mean college and university were a given -- it's was expected of all privileged Jewish kids in my generation. Even law school was a given -- it was expected. I initially wanted to go to medical school and follow in my father's footsteps, but I went to university in Boulder, Colorado, so I spent a bit too much time skiing in the majestic rocky mountains and too little time attending class. I was actually pre-med my entire four years of university and I took all the required courses. But due to my boredom and lethargic attitude toward my coursework, my grades weren't good enough to get into a respectable medical school -- or really any medical school in the U.S. So my laid back nature and indifference to life in general led me to do the next logical thing, which was to go to law school. I figured that would give me at least another three years of fun and avoidance of the 'real world.'
I was very entrepreneurial from an early age, and I created and developed many of my own projects business concepts over the years. But I could never seem to follow through with most things, and I was always changing my mind about what I wanted to do with my life. One day I'm a lawyer; the next day I'm a wanna-be rock star; failed empire builder. Maybe a doctor, businessman. I even went back to graduate school for a year (business school) in my late twenties, because it allowed me to put off making decisions about who I wanted to be. Consistently unsure of myself and always questioning my own motives.
I also felt a pain in my heart -- all my life -- because of the Holocaust. I still feel that pain, and it does not diminish over time -- it actually seems to get worse as time goes by, as I grow older and wiser. Obsessively questioning everything -- and distrustful -- about my world. I've spent much time pondering the reality about what human beings are capable of doing when ignorance and evil collide. About the unspeakable pain that my grandparents must have experienced. I have felt guilty at times -- like I needed to feel that same pain in order to accept the fact that most of my family was wiped out in cold blood at the hands of the Germans. An anger that never goes away. A fierce hatred of injustice. Overly critical, resentful, intolerant, and a rage cloaked in undeserved feelings of shame and guilt.
I learned to numb my pain with drugs and alcohol. Sex. Risk. Money. Entitlement and material possessions. Humour. Sarcastic, jaded wit. Anything to numb the pain that never goes away. All of those devices eventually stopped working. So the pain grew. I fell deeper into darkness and despair. And I experienced several years of very real pain -- all kinds of pain and suffering that I've written about before in other venues and in my book Soul Cancer. For me, I experienced unthinkable loss -- loss of every single material possession and relationship. Complete isolation and alienation from my world. Imprisonment. Unforgiving. Fearless. Suicidal.
But always the pain in my heart was there. And it remains. A jaded, yet realistic, view of humanity -- perhaps 'inhumanity' is a more appropriate term. Self-destructive to the point of homelessness and loneliness and more and more darkness -- more despair. Fear of no human being. No fear of pain or death. A cold-hearted desire to seek vengeance for all injustice in this world. A prisoner of my own mind, my own twisted philosophy and ideology borne through the sum total of my life experience.
Yet, along the way, I also experienced profound 'spiritual' experiences and moments of light in the darkest of places. I grew into a different man. I acquired things like compassion, sensitivity, generosity, and a relentless supporter of the 'underdog.' I found a joy in helping those who could not help themselves. I grew up. I became a man and I acquired knowledge through experience. I guess I became enlightened in a way. A proper adult who came to the realization that our world is ruled by greedy little children. Human beings have hidden the truth about our world from our children for generations. In an attempt to keep the children 'innocent.' The problem with that methodology is that the kids eventually grow up to rule the world -- generation after generation of 'innocent,' ignorant, uninformed children in adult form become the politicians, money-men and other criminals who control the fate of this planet.
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| Me, grown up. |
Children who believe stories in bibles about prophets and prophecy and Armageddon. Christ, the Bible is the largest children's book ever written. 'Intelligent' men who use the only human faculty for decision-making -- logic and reason -- to make decisions about anything at all, cast aside that same logic and reason when it comes to the Bible, the Qoran, Fifty Shades of Grey, and other books that deal with certain things. Why does this happen? Why? Because the large majority of these men of power are still children, and children will believe anything they are told by the 'adults.'
Let me ask you a very simple question: If something doesn't make any sense to me, then why would I believe it? That's called wilful ignorance, otherwise known as blind faith.
So what do I believe at this point in my life? I believe in logic and reason -- man's sole faculty for solving or deciding anything and everything in life. Because it makes sense. And don't tell me that God is too big for me to understand. Or that I just need to have faith in something that doesn't make any sense. Because if man is made in God's image, then I should have no trouble at all understanding all of the bullshit written in the Bible or any other 'godly' work. Everything would be crystal clear to me. I would be omnipotent and all-knowing, loving and completely insane.
Well, I am none of those things with the exception of love. I love my family and friends. I love whiskey and women. I love any human being who does not have evil written on his/her heart. But I also believe in fairness and justice. And I think humanity is due for another Flood. And I think I'll build my own Ark. Any human being with goodness and love in his/her heart is welcome to come aboard my Ark. And the innocent lower animals too -- the ones that don't smell too badly.
Who is not allowed onto my Ark? Well, obviously the Germans, just to be fair. And also any person with evil in his/her heart. Those who are wilfully ignorant too. And certainly those who covet money. And, for purposes of morality, Kanye West, the entire Kardashian family, Donald Trump, anyone who owns a firearm, Liza Minelli, and the asshole who recently stole my Ray-Bans. For all the rest of humanity, I only have this to say to you: grow the fuck up, seek truth at any cost, and help one another -- then you too can join my party boat.
And just in case I haven't irritated you enough yet, if you're still reading this, guess what? I actually do believe in God. But it's not the God of the Bibles. It's the God that resides inside my heart, and I only found him after walking through the deep, dark void of my soul long enough to reach the divine spark at the center of my heart -- a heart, that despite immeasurable odds -- still keeps beating, keeps thinking and keeps spreading my own personal message of truth, based on experience. And I will continue to question everything and learn about my world until I die.
Peace/Warm Regards:
Jude Blues
Peace/Warm Regards:
Jude Blues
