Posted on by Kyle Roques

The Redemptive Hero

Watching Son(s) of Sam on Netflix got me thinking about the human desire of wanting to be a part of a group, something bigger than yourself. This seems to be neurophysiological condition hard wired into us.

The problem being, not knowing if a group, organization, religion, cult, policy or the like, is dangerous or worthy of your time/sacrifice. There is one concrete and guaranteed principle you can use as a rule to determine if any said group is dangerous and should be avoided. That is: the group should never require you to sacrifice your individuality for the group.

Any group, society, organization, etc. that requires you to sacrifice your individuality for the “greater good” of the group is doomed to fail. This is a tenet that has been potrayed in the oldest myths – from the ancient Summerian’s to the Egyptian’s all the way through the East to the West including Christianity.

The “group/society” will stagnate and die without renewal from the heroic individual. That’s what these myths are essentially saying, that we need to embody and act out being the redemptive hero to revivify the stagnated state.

The most glaring examples of groups doomed to failure, from sacrificing the individual for the group being Communism and Fascism. This is how our laws are set up in every successful civilization – that there is something redemptive and divine in every individual, as a human being. This includes murderers, rapists, or any criminal – we acknowledge that there is something divine, worthy and capable of redemption in each individual. Whether you know this and/or believe this explicitly or not, this is what we all act out.

This is how I know Freemasonry, as a fraternal organization, is founded on safe and solid principles. They explicitly state that your first priority as a Brother Mason is your “vocation”, not just meaning your work, but meaning working on yourself, as an individual, is priority #1 – then comes your brothers and the lodge (the group).

So this applies to any group (ie. LGBTQ, cars, environmental, etc.), government, organization religion, etc., etc.. While this isn’t the only criteria, it is the first and foremost, one that CANNOT be infringed upon. If they want you to sacrifice yourself for the group (whether explicitly stated or not – typically it’s not and cleverly veiled) GET OUT! It will be doomed to fail and could be dangerous.

Posted on by Kyle Roques

Slavery Will Set You Free

Nietzsche has said that in order to be free you first have to become a slave. What he means by that is you just don’t grow up from being a (free) child to the same (free) generalized individuality as an adult, without first dedicating yourself to some sort of discipline (ie. religion, sports, the Scouts, school, etc.), to become something specific – a voluntary slavery if you will – and that sets the foundation for developing your individuality as an adult.

The discipline sets you free to becoming an individual as an adult. I see this as a necessary step, one that cannot be dismissed or avoided.

If you don’t have the discipline to voluntarily commit yourself to becoming something specific, other than just being “yourself”, you will not develop an individuality as an adult. You’ll be a nobody, nihilistically wandering through life, constantly reacting, never in control, a slave to life’s burdens and suffering – never being able to “find” who you are.

This is the nihilism I’m seeing so much of today with my generation and the one’s under me coming up. You HAVE to have the discipline to dedicate yourself to becoming something other than what you are, or you’ll always be a nobody, just a slave to the harshest parts of this reality. In order to be free, you first have to become a slave, it’s better to choose something constructive to be a slave to.

Posted on by Kyle Roques

Metaphorical Truth – Killing God?

Since Neitzche, many people have agreed with the notion that God, in recent generations, is dead. Meaning we aren’t religious anymore (ie. praying, living up to a higher power, engaging in ritual, etc.) and don’t believe in “God”.

While I agree that God is dead or dying in that sense, I believe, even in this current age, that God isn’t dead, God cannot die. To the ancients God(s) existed in the sky, in the forest, rivers, oceans, in our institutions, in our hearts and in our concious minds. God is majoraly a projection of our imagination into the objective realm to help make sense of the world. This doesn’t make God any less real than if he were to actually exist as a literal being – how human behavior manifest, the cause and effects of physical reality and the end results are the same, no matter how you think of God. This is one of those metaphorical truths. Just like it will increase the well-being of an individual acting as if a gun is cocked and loaded, acting as if God was real will increase the well-being of humanity.

This quote is what provoked this post and is relevant here:
“Debord also draws an equivalence between the role of mass media marketing in the present and the role of religions in the past.The spread of commodity-images by the mass media, produces “waves of enthusiasm for a given product” resulting in “moments of fervent exaltation similar to the ecstasies of the convulsions and miracles of the old religious fetishism”.”

God hasn’t died we are just worshipping new idols – God is now the new iPhone, drugs, vanity, or any unhealthy obsession/addiction. God exists in a very real – biologically concrete – way in our minds (it’s how our minds and imagination works), we cannot destroy Him so it would be wise to learn to worship Him in a healthy and constructive way, and to work towards cultivating our highest human faculties. So God isn’t dead/dying, we are only killing ourselves.