ANY sane person would concede that our illusions are nothing more than our dreams under a different name. We, however, like to intimate that dreams are “good” while illusions are “bad.” That, in any case, leaves nightmares out in the cold, doesn’t it? We think of our illusions as what we consider reality when they are not, while dreams are simply not yet tangible truths or formally so. These are not idle musings; they are the cornerstone of our understanding of ourselves and our interaction with others. We are rocking violently these days, and it is time to pause and think.
There is a lot of verbiage these days and little thought or ideas. Someone wrote in the Arab press that the world is “against” us simply because we “hold the keys to civilization.” I was fascinated by the idea and could not let go. Is this an illusion of the particularly cruel type, or a dream gone wayward? It is not a bad thing to hold the keys to civilization if they do indeed exist, but what exactly are we talking about here?
The brutality of this self-inflicted verdict lies in many things, not least of all the chronic self-deception that the mentally disfigured live under. The keys to anything do not lie with anyone. Indeed, if keys do exist, they are in the public domain. The key to discovering a new planet, for example, lies in watching the night sky, and, needless to say, the sky is open to all.
If our massive ego is shuddering under the pressure of our meager achievements, shouldn’t we try to tame the massive and pad the meager? It is simply commonsensical to hide one’s shortcomings. I don’t see what good comes from advertising them in such a brutal manner.
Another writer waxed felicitous in a major newspaper about Katrina being the “wrath of God visited upon America for its evil doings.” Had I been the editor of that newspaper I would have asked him how he knew that. I understand laws and ritual based on scriptures issued by men of the cloth, but how can one be so sure of such verdicts issued with impunity? Where do you begin a dialogue with such a person? Indeed, why bother with anything resembling a dialogue?
Yet the world does not wobble out of control on such matters. Indeed, America itself has its own version of this madness as in the case of the evangelist who told his followers to send him a certain amount of money or God would “lift” him away from them. Unfortunately, he got the money and we missed the “lifting.” While the Earth spins, such actions show us that humanity, or a large portion of it at least, is very wobbly indeed.
Those who formulate and diffuse their personal illusions as truths are loud. Those “wobblies” within the ranks of humanity have big ears and few brain cells. The combination is deadly. Before you know it, the cries in the farcical wilderness become a reality to many, the many become a creed, and the creed, inevitably, declares its monopoly on the “only” path to salvation. We all know the rest of the deadly farce.
