The murder of “reality” is our greatest crime, for in the shadow of such a crime there is no longer even a image of the event, for death like the life it precedes and ends cannot be accommodated nor henceforth “located” in the universe of the purely functional abstraction, namely what’s commonly called “man” or “woman”, for in essence they don’t exist anymore. So just as there is no more good or evil in this world, but only the state of entropy that combines perfectly with the totality of our boredom towards everything we once were. So equally it is true that no category is immune, the religious, over the tedious debates about the wearing of religious symbols, the secular, over the tedious debates about the wearing of secular symbols, the political, over the tedious debates about the wearing of political symbols. Nothing is immune any longer!
In an old Germany fairytale I once read that there was an exact simulacrum of this world in a village, where once there was told a fairy tale to all the children who had gathered in the town square one fine day, about a land where everything would become real again one day, and in the story one child asked, “how is that to be?” and the voice said “when day is simply nothing more then day and when night is simply nothing more than night, then all will be revealed to be what it simply is”. Old fairytales! For we don’t even exist in the simulacrum of the formless world of matter anymore, in 2006 imperfection is as difficult and as rare as perfection once was, just as the myth about the “reality” of the devil was once as indispensable in the motions of a God, who cared about our the destiny of our “being” in this world; both nevertheless signify the loss of any critical difference, of any critical movement.
One cannot any longer object to same-sex marriages morally as they having nothing to do with men or women, for to be “gay” in such an arrangement is to be nothing but an infinite function of an abstracted non-existent human being who sole role it is to become the same replaceable function of yet another function in his or her “being”. Same-sex marriages should mean “nothing” to us. Yet the fact that it’s likely to be adapted into Law in the majority of civilised countries over the next few years surely means that we are all now inhabiting an intellectual and spiritual universe in which not even the events surrounding the murder of the “real world”, that once existed in terms of not just the material reality of the “real world” but also the historical and cultural portals that spoke through “the real” as “the other” in terms of religion, poetry and philosophy surely mean that perhaps the majority of us no longer exist nor wish to be in any form of “reality” as it once existed. How else then can the worldwide tolerance of boredom, of total absurdity that seems to permeate every part of our being be explained otherwise?
Yet perhaps we shouldn’t worry about same-sex marriages (as we are not talking about men or women who happen to love members of the same sex) for maybe they will never exist in our own particular reality or maybe if we do worry, then perhaps it’s not because of any supposed moral or ethnic argument, but just because it is one more symbol of a “reality” that no longer has any events that can cast shadows against its own distorted images.
Maybe the “laos tou Theou” (people of God, the Church) will accept true theology as theosis even if some church leaders try to stop it. I found a (Greek?) blog for Orthodox people, gay and straight, that is very good and theological. Great icons and stories and prayers. It’s http://jn1034.blogspot.com Maybe there is some hope for people to go beyond just sex and have real relationships of love in Christ. Let’s pray.
James
Same-sex marriages.
The murder of “reality” is our greatest crime, for in the shadow of such a crime there is no longer even a image of the event, for death like the life it precedes and ends cannot be accommodated nor henceforth “located” in the universe of the purely functional abstraction, namely what’s commonly called “man” or “woman”, for in essence they don’t exist anymore. So just as there is no more good or evil in this world, but only the state of entropy that combines perfectly with the totality of our boredom towards everything we once were. So equally it is true that no category is immune, the religious, over the tedious debates about the wearing of religious symbols, the secular, over the tedious debates about the wearing of secular symbols, the political, over the tedious debates about the wearing of political symbols. Nothing is immune any longer!
In an old Germany fairytale I once read that there was an exact simulacrum of this world in a village, where once there was told a fairy tale to all the children who had gathered in the town square one fine day, about a land where everything would become real again one day, and in the story one child asked, “how is that to be?” and the voice said “when day is simply nothing more then day and when night is simply nothing more than night, then all will be revealed to be what it simply is”. Old fairytales! For we don’t even exist in the simulacrum of the formless world of matter anymore, in 2006 imperfection is as difficult and as rare as perfection once was, just as the myth about the “reality” of the devil was once as indispensable in the motions of a God, who cared about our the destiny of our “being” in this world; both nevertheless signify the loss of any critical difference, of any critical movement.
One cannot any longer object to same-sex marriages morally as they having nothing to do with men or women, for to be “gay” in such an arrangement is to be nothing but an infinite function of an abstracted non-existent human being who sole role it is to become the same replaceable function of yet another function in his or her “being”. Same-sex marriages should mean “nothing” to us. Yet the fact that it’s likely to be adapted into Law in the majority of civilised countries over the next few years surely means that we are all now inhabiting an intellectual and spiritual universe in which not even the events surrounding the murder of the “real world”, that once existed in terms of not just the material reality of the “real world” but also the historical and cultural portals that spoke through “the real” as “the other” in terms of religion, poetry and philosophy surely mean that perhaps the majority of us no longer exist nor wish to be in any form of “reality” as it once existed. How else then can the worldwide tolerance of boredom, of total absurdity that seems to permeate every part of our being be explained otherwise?
Yet perhaps we shouldn’t worry about same-sex marriages (as we are not talking about men or women who happen to love members of the same sex) for maybe they will never exist in our own particular reality or maybe if we do worry, then perhaps it’s not because of any supposed moral or ethnic argument, but just because it is one more symbol of a “reality” that no longer has any events that can cast shadows against its own distorted images.
dimitrios vlaxos
Maybe the “laos tou Theou” (people of God, the Church) will accept true theology as theosis even if some church leaders try to stop it. I found a (Greek?) blog for Orthodox people, gay and straight, that is very good and theological. Great icons and stories and prayers. It’s http://jn1034.blogspot.com Maybe there is some hope for people to go beyond just sex and have real relationships of love in Christ. Let’s pray.