A PLAGUE UPON THE LAND

Copyright, 1990-2008,

by Surly

A plague has again arisen in the land. It is not an illness caused by an invading germ, but is endemic, a wound in the social fabric. Everywhere is festering hatred. It is found whenever people feel powerless, fearful, insecure and unfree. It exists in individuals, in neighborhoods and in entire communities. Fear is its driving force. Fear of loss, of the unknown, of self and others, ultimately of death or its propinquitous, unbidden potential. It breeds mistrust which must be projected and focused onto a scapegoat to blame, to persecute.

This anger is ever simmering beneath the surface of everyday life, an undercurrent of violence carefully fed by our preoccupation with physical force, and always ready to erupt at the slightest trigger. So much is carefully hidden behind the closed doors of family sanctity, or in the ghettos of the poor, emerging as juvenile delinquency, street gangs, seemingly senseless crime or the potential for the irrational, angry mob.

It begins when freedom is crushed, when children are denied emotional expression, the need to experience life fully thwarted, personal growth denied. It continues with sexual repression, with abuse of children or of a spouse or lover, or when the spirit is beaten down by family, business, social or political oppression. It ends with apathy and organized force without an ethic directed by fearful, angry dealers of death who stalk the land seeking to extinguish the light of wonder in children's eyes and send the youth to death in battle out of a need to preserve status or a misplaced sense of duty to a social order that deals in death.

And the fire is set and carefully fed by bigoted mongers of hatred who prey on the tired and fearful using soothing, simplistic platitudes to gain a following to further their means to power. It is a driven madness against their upbringing which teaches repression, guilt, hardness of heart, and a bigotry that gnaws at the soul. To escape the inner pain and responsibility, their self-hatred is turned outward into society. This cycle of human misery remains unbroken from generation to generation.

Thus we live in an arid wasteland of the human soul sold into a bondage of competing for scarce material things, be they wants or needs, or to gain an elusive sense of power and control which can never be fulfilled. But when freedom is equated with privilege and power there is not liberty. We need to seek and foster a freedom of the self, not a freedom defined and allowed by laws or social position. It is this unbalanced view that has left the spiritual needs unrecognized and unmet. Such is the heavy price we pay for this we call civilization.