Heroes of Darkness
Philosophy Podium: Heroes of Darkness
In the philosophy schools of M’TAM, we teach students to recognize the limitations of the human brain if they want to discover the capabilities of the self; and one of the most important of these limitations is that a brain, despite its brilliance and ability to solve complex equations, cannot invent! Yes, the brain does not invent. We cannot think of anything that we have not previously been exposed to in one way or another. Individual genius, in reality, resides only in the capabilities of the brain to memorize all the aspects of becoming in logics that are capable of independence and of forming relationships of assimilation when needed. In short, the biggest handicap of the brain is its inability to invent. To compensate for this handicap, the brain also has the capability to reproduce, perfectly or imperfectly, whatever it has been exposed to.
According to teachings of the schools of M’TAM, at the genesis of the human being, he/she entered the world completely blank, with no memory or values... so the human being could not even find a reason to continue his existence. A human being entered the world far less conditioned than a physical newborn; and if we consider our babies innocent, fragile and virgin, it is clear that we lack the language for qualifying the state of purity of the mind of the human being when he entered this world.
When human beings arrived, a group of Gods gathered them and asked one question: which direction are you going to take towards the becoming of your existence? In other words, what will be the purpose of your existence? Now, recalling that our brains lack the capability to invent or think of anything that does not already exist, the goal we set for ourselves was to reproduce the only thing we already knew, the World of the Gods. This answer of ours to the Gods gave birth to our concept of the "perfect model", represented by the world as lived by Gods. The notion of a perfect model, in turn, introduces the concept of dualism in us! Every time we say that an act or thing is good, what we are saying is that the act or thing can be found in what we call the perfect model, meaning in the world of the Gods. What is not in the perfect model is wrong -- a flaw, a fault, an imperfection.
It is then undeniable that a dualistic vision of the world has misguided humanity’s steps in the obscure desert of morality and spirituality. All the fundamental qualities and faults that have allowed the human being to rise from inertia become at the same time the causes of his/her dehumanization and of the drowning of our species in barbarism and self-destruction. We need to recognize how fragile we are when politics and religions start to manipulate us. Our dualistic approach to the world is simply stripped of the mechanism that could have let us know if what we are identifying as a model to reproduce is really born from the world of the Gods. And even if there was such a mechanism, who is to say that the engine we use to judge that mechanism is not corrupted by those who were trying to decide our destiny even before our birth?
Ironically, it is very easy to colonize a human being. Every good observer knows that we all have this tendency to internalize what we observe and make it part of who we are. This is why we say in Africa that a lie repeated many times is a lot more believable than a truth that is rarely spoken. This proverb, though very realistic and understandable, exposes the moral and spiritual fragility of the human being. Even if a lie is repeated eternally, repetition alone is not reason for the lie to ever equal or become the truth. When another proverb says that no matter how long a log of wood stays in the river, it never turns into a crocodile, everything appears absolutely clear. These two examples betray our fragility and instability.
There are a few more examples even inside the spiritual world of the original cosmogony that expose this great contrast between the perfect world to reproduce and the fragility and corruptibility of the new architect to build it. One such example is the evolution taken by the notion of devotion or adoration of the Gods chosen by the community or individual. All priests of the spiritual domain know that every God has his own cult, a group of ceremonies that are sometimes incomprehensible to the human that this God recognises and towards which he reacts. These cults, for thousands of years, have allowed an interaction between the architects of the perfect world and human beings. But we can see that from the first moment human instabilities manifested, man resorted to an emotional approach to his God!
Then man simply started to "declare his love" to his God. He started wanting to give himself the impression that he is raising his God, making his God the greatest, the strongest, the best, etc. He started assuming not only that he can fool himself, but that he can also fool his God. He started believing that flattering his God will predispose his God to accept his prayers and forgive his faults!
At first, this might be dismissed as a small and innocent malaise. But in reality, this attitude humanizes Gods, and (as we do with each other or with other humans we would like to corrupt) we are trying to recruit our favorite God into our service! Our intellectual and spiritual dishonesty is clearly exposed when we try to corrupt Gods we ourselves have chosen and whom we have identified as incorruptible, without taking time to ask ourselves: what do these Gods think about us? If we declare that nothing is hidden from them, we must also know that our dishonesty is not hidden from them.
