First let me apologize... I never got my anime blog rolling like I managed with my Lego blog. But I have this place, and I have things I want to talk about, and I want to have a place to put them... So I have put it here, where I was keeping my anime music videos.
There is an anime called Gestalt about two travelers going out to find a forbidden God... an evil God... or so it has been passed down. I'm not going to talk about the anime... it's not very good (mild understatement), but I think about it from time to time, and I watch it from time to time.
I've a method to namedropping this particular anime on my anime blog that for today, and perhaps forever... is now just a place to write things I want to express that are not about anime, but are about a white homeschooled kid growing up in white christian Calvinist America and wandering haphazardly across the internet looking for answers to my questions about everything and everyone before during and after the 2016 election. Come with me on a long unwinding way, I have a thought about what happened to the tree of life.
I was thinking about white parenting and my experience as the kid, and how white people treat black people.
In Calvinist Christianity children are born in sin; cute, evil little buggers. When I was a Highschooler I couldn't negotiate for needs, wants, or activities with my folks.
I was expected to fall in line. Here's an example of a conversation pulled from memory
Boy Scout Camp was $140 dollars, I was always paying about $80 of that. I had trouble making more than 80 dollars in that year long span of time between scout camp years, I wanted to buy Lego with my $80 dollars. It might help if I elaborate, I fucking love Lego, but for Calvinist God and my parents, I had to not make an idol of Lego, so I couldn't ask for it as much as I wanted to and usually didn't get the ones I asked for or wanted most... Lego, and methods for acquisition of Lego was always on my mind.
"I don't want to go to Boy Scout Camp this summer, I have other things I want the money for."
Oh, you're going to boy scout camp, don't worry, we'll cover half like last year.
As if I'd been on the hook for the $140 the whole time, I was trying to negotiate out of going, save them their amount and I keep my $80... but they wouldn't listen... So year by year despite my goals and requests I still spent the $80.
Why didn't I push back? Have you ever dealt with a Calvinist negotiator, they'll tell you how undeserving you are of anything as they strip away what's left, and then give a smidgen of 'their preferences for you' back. You ask to spend your own money and it's paywalled, must memorize x many verses to unlock x-many spending dollars once, of the money in your wallet. They didn't believe in allowances... they were paywalling the money I went out and earned at my job.
I've been disappointed by the Christianity I was raised in... it was meant to be good, that's what they told me. Christianity was aligned with actions against genocide... or so I was informed. There were always the little oddities, like my Dad lamenting off the cuff that ancient cultures killing their rebellious children to bring the other kids in line was not still in use; a very disrespectful way to handle differences of opinion between parent and child. But I got the memo, if you don't like how we're treating you keep your mouth shut, other kids literally died opening their mouths.
I think it's an underlying indication of the problem in my Christian heritage.
I must specify the Christian branch I have in mind... I'm in particular going to be drawing on my opinions having grown up with Calvinism, Presbyterianism of the PCA, and the OPC as being fully immersed these were always on my mind when I wasn't able to escape into the joyful pages of a lego catalogue, I was also quite enthusiastic about American Girl catalogues... there was no money and video games weren't allowed... and reading was restricted so when I wasn't reading the Bible I usually had a catalogue with cool pictures and lots of bits of text like... 6984 Galactic Mediator.
There's always the possibility that my problems were parent specific, but... if it was, I've deep dived for a few years (3) getting the other Christian Homeschooler kids opinions, and I know... my experience with Christian parenting wasn't a unique one off, or even a particularly bad example... up until I was about 10 years old it was generically pleasant, but for my niche wants it was mostly doing find and replace to expunge all of my preferences (evil kid asks for what now?) with parentally approved convenient replacements. I once was told I could read the Hobbit instead of Star Wars... so off I went to get my substitute book about an alien and when I opened the book and saw fantasy critters... I wasn't able to watch Star Wars still... and I didn't bother reading the Hobbit... I felt cheated... turns out if they'd let me discover the Hobbit like I discovered Star Wars I probably would have liked it sooner... but instead I remembered it as being, NOT, what I was excited about.
There's an old hymn God Be Merciful to Me, with a line that goes something like this, "I am evil born in sin, thou desirest truth within."
This is a notable verse... from my experience The Christian parents want the little children to know how very very bad they are, and so the parents enforce goodness on their very being... often forcefully, nitpicking whatever odd behavior they can find. Pretty soon the child knows how to be good by nitpicking every little thing about itself. The child creates an interior dialogue constantly thinking thoughts, then sorting the bad thoughts out.... and there are many bad and evil thoughts, they know so, since their parents, teachers, and religion told them so. The child knows it's evil, and this is humility, thus this means it's being very good, being better than the children who've grown up feeling pretty good about themselves, who nevertheless must be understood to be very evil... more evil even than the evil child drawing the good feelings of knowing they've worked very hard to suppress the evil within themselves. The secular children aren't humiliated about being evil, they're... I hope this is true, celebrated, and maybe having an average, pretty okay, day.
So the (Humiliation, evil transmuted into Good obedience) Gives the Calvinist child an edge over those happy heathens who think they're doing a-ok.
The Calvinist Child having not yet discovered its full potential of good and evil actions becomes strait jacketed by parents who are themselves afraid of being the evil they confess to being. It becomes a sort of posturing. Calvinists go around proudly proclaiming themselves to be Evil before the sight of God and thus better than the Good secularists who have no such compunction to self abnegation. Thus it's important for Calvinists to guide their children in actively burying that Evil light under a bushel of rules and regulations, to prevent the light of truth getting out. They suppress normal behavior, they try to rid the mind and the body of behaviors based on their state of the art rules... circa 1536 (Calvin's Institutes)
There's a phrase, accurate or not: "No one wants to be evil," Better said probably, "No one wants to be perceived as evil." The parent must according to the Calvinist Doctrine tell the child that it must acknowledge it's evil, but the parent doesn't want the child to act evil, so the parent first proposes a malady of sin for the child, and to protect the child from its inmost malady the parent actively prepares a birdcage for its child's yet flightless mind. Falling is for certain very frightening, and the mother bird wouldn't want her chicks to fall down to the earth. So the child being evil is not allowed to be evil, nor is the child allowed to stretch its wings as it may fly too far and touch the burning hot sun of a Good God. The Evil child must be punished for being born the way God made it, it's the only way the parent can be sure they've raised their Carnally caged (free in the spirit) child right.
The knowledge of good and evil is arbitrary knowledge, a mirror... two equal actors reflecting off each other. If you're careful, you can avoid looking at one side of the reflection, and live semi-confidently within the Good Men's knowledge cage as half a human.
The parent looks at the child and sees evil
The child looks at the parent and sees good
I'm parent, I punish bad, it is a good action, I am a good teacher
The child is bad, The parent punishes it, the child protests the punishment, the child's protests are a bad action, it is a bad existence,
Good seeks an asymmetric advantage, it does not want to bounce off against evil,
Good wants to run roughshod over Evil and bury its opposite. Good wants a hierarchy.
Good wants to be right, and to punish Evil.
For Good, there are so many Evils, one must always be on guard to rip them up and throw them away.
I'm good, I make laws outlawing Evil's bad existence, I make laws outlawing Evil's bad action
I make laws upholding my good existence, I make laws upholding my good action.
I'm Good, therefore I get to kill Evil, and it is righteous
Evil is bad, therefore it's wickedness for Evil to protest Good punishing it.
The knowledge of Good and Evil is arbitrary... it all depends on the word wielder and their audience.
Calvin propped up support for Evil actions, but he was able to frame his actions, and insulate himself from repercussions, as Good, and got away with it.
The holder of the knowledge of good obscures the knowledge of evil from its good offspring, and tries to get rid of it.
More evil springs up in the child as good is always on the lookout for the evil it must purify its child of.
Good hides the bad, good covers over what it does not want itself to know.
Good luxuriates in a willful one eyed blindness having purified itself of its evil eye.
Good's offspring carry on with their parents' blindness to the 3rd and 4th generation... if they continue in the behavior.
The Children try to destroy their own evil, that they may perform this ritual cutting on the Evil neighbor as well... Do unto others extrinsically as you've been instructed to do unto your carnal self intrinsically.
I'm going to play with the word Evil now... like a magnet labeled north is the south end attracted to north, and vice versa... I shall play with the nature of Evil, I shall invert its literary use.
Evil has no such luxury as to cut out its Evil eye, like a mirror evil sees both the good in itself and the bad for which it stands accused by the good. Despite evil's efforts Good punishes evil's existence for the sake of inflicting punishment on a chosen word applied to a chosen vessel raised up for destruction, there is nothing Evil can do to appease good, so it keeps its Evil eye, it sees what Good is doing to it. Good inflicted wounds upon Evil that Evil may properly be seen to be suffering. Good can't feel Good about itself if Evil isn't suffering, it's doctrinally sound to rough Evil up.
Evil doesn't cut the good eye out of its head, evil does not give up on its goodness, for good would cut out evil's evil eye which is forced to witness evil treatment continually and evil without goodness would be fully blinded, flailing wildly, as one falling eternally, or laid still at rock bottom; silent as death.
Evil stands guardedly with both eyes open, knowing itself good, knowing the evil good has branded it with.
Good disorders its own thinking with imagined divisions, good splits off part of itself and declares, that which I've cut off isn't me, it can only be evil.
Good clouds its knowledge, and loses sight of the whole picture... its aim is not true, though it prides itself upon its own half truths.
Good's only true aim is lining up the crosshairs on evil. Good's true aim is not love, good desires to destroy evil, good is the destroyer. Good is a violent defense against the spiritual forces of Evil... Good is the screaming child in the deep end of a lake, seeking to drown the Lifeguard before its own head can get pulled underwater.
So I will tell you.
Evil enters heaven ahead of good, Since evil does not have the luxury of knowing only good.
Evil knows both good which it is and evil of which it stands accused and which good engraves on it.
Therefore Evil when it clings to its own existence and its inmost being's inherent goodness, despite Good's claims to the contrary, knows all... For it knows its inmost being, and it knows what Good is accusing it of being... Evil can see that its knowledge of itself and Good's description of itself do not overlap neatly, Evil can see that Good is dealing untruthfully, but Good believes it's correct and cannot see the double body of Evil's good and whole self knowledge merging. Good surmises that Evil's resistance to Good's posturing, laws, and edicts proscribing punishments comes from Evil being Evil, and not from Good being in conflict with another human's God given existence.
God knows all, holding within itself both good and evil, If god hides its face from evil, it cannot see all, a halfblind god cannot know all, therefore, a half blind god cannot be God.
Here I'll more aggressively turn my own grasp of the spiritual realm of reality to a Scandal for the Calvinist.
The Devil is an aspect of God, A Good Calvinist cannot acknowledge the devil in God and so fashions a god it will accept, a fraudulent bifurcated vision of a God seeking to destroy the Devil once for all, The Calvinist chooses a splitting away for a path to the hoped for good god. It destroys and brings its destroyed victim to the wrathful god hoping to please it and appease its wrath. When Good's god is not appeased it assumes it has not destroyed enough, So goodness goes out seeking whom it may devour, and kills again, in the hopes that god will recognize good's good efforts.
Can a mother be appeased with the blood of her children? and yet good tries this tactic over and over and over without fail.
The Black people of America stand accused of wickedness by the White People. Communists, liberals, druggies, deadbeat dads, lazy, and on and on the accusations roll in. They want to be gods! good white christians quail about the candidates of the day, they've rejected our half truths and think they know better.
And as I now know, I think it's true enough to say if not better, what's true is Black People know more... about people.
Minorities face racism because White people tell their children the black people behave badly, the white children grow up to become cops, or maintain faulty opinions for the benefit of political leverage, they continue to believe black people behave badly, and they in turn treat them roughly, the black people protest the rough treatment, but this just goes to show to the white cops and the people who are promoting their own one eyed blindness that the Black people are bad actors and can't be trusted with anything... leastwise Equality. What's a Black person to do when they're first presumed bad, then treated badly, and then punished for protesting the bad treatment which leads to them being treated more roughly still? Now? but not just now, people are being and have been shot and killed at protests by the Good people who must make sure to protect their country from the Evil in other men.
White people cannot acknowledge the good which black men do, the white people hide their faces from them.
The white people keep their children from them, stop their own ears from listening to them.
The black people warn their own children to be careful, stay woke, they must always know what the good white people are thinking, but the good white people do not want to know what the evil black man is thinking, they only want to hear good things, and they want the evil seeing black man to cover his own eye, to cover up the bad things we've done to him, he would be at risk of showing them things their goodness cannot accept. He would be at risk of showing them acts they cannot comprehend.
the black people are decent folk and know so, but also stand accused of being indecent and know that the White people say that about them too.
The black people have been accused of devilry, communism, and bad action for protesting the violence inflicted on them by White people, by government of the U.S.A. and by Police forces, and despite that they're stubbornly here, they being kindhearted and stouthearted despite the accusations leveled against them are more fully God than white men.
Evil faced with the onslaught of good, acknowledges it has been defeated, faces death and punishments again and again just because Good feels it must be so, and Evil stands bold against that death, knowing all the while, it too has goodness within it. Evil deserves to be here. Minorities deserve to be here
Good is repulsed at the possibility of acknowledging that it owes Evil anything... Equality! My God!"
"Equality with God is not to be grasped," Good gasps! For Good of all people has most certainly not grasped it.
An ordinary man going about his day was gunned down from behind with 7 bullets and lived... he's paralyzed now.----------------------Or the other one.
an ordinary man desiring to be special went to his city and gunned 2 more down to kill those protesting good's attempt to dispense divine death upon a man. Evil must not demand anything for itself, rather, Evil must be destroyed... Evil cannot ask for anything, be given anything, shown any love... Evil must be destroyed.
Good takes up evil's story of evil's own persecution, good takes up evil's story of evil's defeat, Good refuses to lay down the sword as evil did, good refuses to die as Evil did when Evil could not escape.
Good defends itself from the story of persecution, Good defends itself from the story of defeat. Good is afraid to die, Good claims god will give Good a special place after Good dies, but good is afraid to die.
Good is half blind and does not know God, therefore good is afraid to die, that is why good decides to kill, because good tells itself evil is coming to kill good, and good is afraid to die.
Good does not hear from God like it says it does, so good fears the death it says God will give to Evil. It stays alive everyday for a little longer warning its children about its god's wrath, hoping to one day hear
"well done my good and faithful servant, enter into my rest."
Good is weary from keeping its weapon ready, but it cannot, will not, must not, ever let, evil rest, so good will not rest til evil is vanquished forever.
Rousing violently to defend itself from the outcomes of the evil one's stories of hurt meted out by good Good turns about with stolen stories it has claimed for itself and good fearing harm rushes to defend itself from the harm by doling armloads of harm out. Good is thus found to be a liar, as good did not follow the stories' 3rd development.
Evil saw itself, 1 against 1,000 and saw that it was about to die, evil chose to lay down its sword and cease fighting, evil chose peace, good failed to seek peace, as it claims goodness does. Good struck Evil down after Evil had surrendered.
Evil having surrendered to goodness, rather than striking it down, is God incarnated upon the earth... for God is Love.
The evil God come to earth was struck down by the good men. God's kindness was too far extended, That's how they knew it was the devil, for it loved the evil children just as much as the good children.
The Good men killed God and afterwards they celebrated what god had done for them by giving them strength to kill the devil so they could bring it to their impotent good god. Still, God was not appeased by their newest sacrifice.
Peace, perfect peace, Good men sing, imagining madly that there will be peace someday when Evil is gone, but Evil knows, there is no peace, so, Evil chooses peace within itself.
and God being, good=evil: Unified, acknowledges a cessation of hostilities within itself... for evil, good and evil cease to be, good and evil become as one whole. The person accepts Evil as a part of itself that deserves to be here in the reality, Good surrenders to the return of Evil into itself. Good welcomes evil as family and the division between Man and God falls revealing God is all.
We live in a world where good and evil wars in heaven do not exist, we live in a world where good humans act as if they exist anyway... they want to do harm.
We cannot luxuriate in the knowledge of a world without good and evil. Good is afraid to acknowledge the lie, it hides its face from the lie, with the lie it can give itself wealth, with the lie it can be special, with the lie it tells itself, I'm more than Evil even as I am less than my god.
The ones who believe, nay insist, Good and Evil must exist accuse the ones who do not believe in good and evil of being evil.
The ones who do not believe in good and evil and who do not seek to overpower other's with arbitrary, asymmetrical knowledge ate only from the tree of life.
the ones who believe in the war in heaven, still think the tree of life is beyond their reach, and thus do not know... they could make a trade... lay down the knowledge of Good beside evil's knowledge to see that they are merely the same indistinguishable fruit, put them side by side, see the whole story set together, made complete.
They could accept the Evil with the Good as family, and in exchange receive fruit from the tree of life.
But Good cannot show love to Evil, good only knows how to wield the sword.
Know that you are God, not Good and beneath god, nor Evil and bound for destruction...
You are God, knowing Good and Evil, and When you know both, you'll realize the Good/Evil knowledge is fraud.
To receive the fruit from the tree of life we reject the fruit of the knowledge of Good and Evil.
We are all here, and we deserve to be here. We are God forming one community. A community of humans.
I speak of a very real thing... buried within the mind of living creatures. I know of this thing. For I cast Goodness aside, I gave up on Christian promises of an afterlife of wealth, whatever that is, wealth is agency, wealth is dignity, wealth is joy, wealth is possibility unfettered from good's arbitrary rules and makeshift demands for compliance.
I acknowledged and gave voice to my Evil. I've extended love to my worst parts, my rejected parts, my cast off parts.
I feel it's very hard to state how amazing it felt to realize my nitpicking for Calvin's Christian god was all in vain. Like an uncoiling snake, the burden left me and my nitpicking thoughts whiffed away... and like an explosion there was so much more of me there hiding behind the self hatred and self suppression. And underneath it all... the biggest kind of me, the most sweeping queen imaginable. There's no one here... for all of us, we are the chemistry of this world, we all deserve to be here, we are here, we are the matter making itself into all that is.
( 0 ), What is this place?" We are small specks on the speck of an orb that looks like a speck of dust next to orbs that look like specks of dust next to orbs out whirling about causing explosions every now and again in the big empty." Freedom in Christ through the eyes of the Authoritarian Calvin has nothing to offer this kind of Heretic. For I have delved deep and to my childhood I cannot be but the most heretical creature to white people's Calvinist Christianity claiming the knowledge of Good and Evil which they now eat even as Adam and Eve sinned for eating it. Spit it out, take and eat the fruit of life, and we'll extend equality to the Evil one, all together as one whole.
I was half gone to wrack and ruin after Christian purity and goodness had its way instructing, teaching and purifying me. When I realized I was starting to go missing (dissociating) I went looking for the lost parts and stitched myself back together from my evil cut off thoughts.
In my own way, though I hated my Evil self with a surgical knife when I was Good for obedience sake, I loved myself with needle and thread when I was looking for evil, Looking for Evil when I'd only been taught to keep in good, I stabbed myself, with the fear of going to hell for this. back together many times and drew the thread tight to seal the wounds; and now I'm the whole person I was born to be.
God asked both children to work in the garden,
The evil child went out to the garden and was amazed at the colors of all the flowers. "It's beautiful, it's perfect!" and there the Evil child found rest
The Good child said "I will go and work in the garden," but when it had finished there was no longer a garden there. Good had pulled up all the Evil weeds to please God. "What an awful place this is Good said, "Evil must have planted these weeds In my god's garden... I shall have to get rid of Evil and its seeds before I can begin replanting the right kinds of flowers." And Good worked itself to the bone, and suffered long hours laboring trying to make the garden perfectly good for good alone.
Evil hopes that one day Good will stop murdering Evil, and that Good will stop destroying the flowerbed, and rejoin its twin in radical love and acceptance of all that blooms.
Thank you for reading my spiritual Gestalt.
There is also an anime called Gestalt about two travelers going out to find a forbidden God... an evil God... or so it had been passed down.
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The trick of the knowledge of Good and Evil: You claim not to have eaten it because you're the good one... who wouldn't, not the evil one who would, as if Good is implying that the Evil one did eat it without looking to see if Evil ate it, or asking if they did eat it, only knowing that they must have, because Good can see that they were the Evil one, so they must have definitely been the one to eat it...
One of the Knowledge of Good and Evil fruits is gone... Evil must have been the one who ate it, and just like that it's in Good's mouth already. Munch munch... yummy Good fruit to eat.
And Good doesn't talk to Evil to confirm that Evil ate the fruit, Good knows that Evil did, so it proceeds to punish Evil for what Good knows Evil did without asking Evil if it did it, and Good knows that if Evil protests it did not eat it that Evil is lying, because bad things lie, and Evil ate it and Evil is lying about not eating it...
So Good decides it must do something, it must make the garden great again. it must get rid of Evil, it must cleanse G-d's garden. So it starts killing Evil to make the garden Good as it once was before Evil ate the fruit.
And Good knows the garden will be a better place when Evil is gone, good knows, because Evil is bad, Good told itself so and it was all agreed with only its own half of the conversation, it did not ask Evil for its opinion, because Evil being Evil was not allowed to have an opinion. Evil was supposed to be dead.
Evil ran to G-d for rescue "we were playing in the garden and then the other one started killing me without cause, please help mend the friendship" and Good looked and saw that thing Evil was talking to and Good told itself, be careful, there's a Devil here in the Garden, be careful ,G-d is G-d and the Devil is the Devil...make sure not to get possessed by the Devil. So G-d hears the complaints and pleas of Evil and goes to ask Good what it did to make Evil cry so and the Good immediately knows... something is wrong, the Devil is coming, and Good runs away. It knew it was the Devil coming, it could tell by the ominous question from Evil hanging from its mouth. And It must have come on behalf of the Evil one... Good knows, if it resists the Devil the devil would flee from it, so Good fled from the Devil. And somehow when it looked around... it couldn't locate G-d anymore... it couldn't find the garden anymore... where it was standing were just all these weeds that had to be uprooted.
So Good set to work, clearing the soil, making the earth barren to prepare a place for the new seeds Good had specially selected for the best sort of Garden, a better place, so that someday, one day, G-d will return to say Good job Good, what a wonderful garden you've made without any Evil in it, and then, and only then... will there be peace in the Good garden. Only then will the Garden be whole.
Good is all alone and still waiting for G-d to return and bless its violence.
