Over the past few days I loaded up X (formerly Twitter) and tried it out again. I was floored by how it has changed. I haven’t been on X/Twitter in a few years so I thought it would be the same. It has become a place of anger, ego, demoralizing and fake news. Without any settings or follows, my new account now had Alex Jones, Musk (ok I get that) and Trump as the main sources of my feed. The main vibe: hostility.
Everyone on X seems hostile. The main target seems to be DEI these days. The new boogey man. I saw post proudly proclaim “I care about America and only America.” I saw the Whitehouse press secretary ask “should I keep wearing the cross around my neck,” in obvious virtue signaling. Her attention grabbing post, got hundreds of thousands of “Christians,” who seemed to shout “YES!!” and proclaim, “Jesus is back in the Whitehouse.”
I’m not going to play a partisan. I’m not going to condemn one party for another. What I am concerned about is the utter lack of compassion. It’s like I woke up in a mirror universe. People relishing in an accident, sitting on the edge of their seat to see if the driver or pilot was a minority so they can sneer, “DEI!” People mocking and jeering at people losing their jobs.
After fully sickened with X, I went over to Facebook, and was looking up illustrators, to find some artists to promote. What I found was more angry partisans. Posting rude images against other people, other cultures, the “other.” Bullbaiting has become the norm and people are so polarized. X has hundreds of thousands of posts from people who seem to believe one side of a story… while other echo chambers are the exact opposite.
Karma
Did we forget about Karma? Even if you find the word offensive or unrealistic, most spiritual traditions have a concept of “what we sow, so shall we reap.” If that doesn’t work for you, the realm of science reveals in Newton’s 3rd law of motion that each force has an equal and opposite response (“Also known as the law of action and reaction, this law states that forces come in pairs, and that the magnitudes of the forces are equal but opposite in direction.”)
Karma is the painting of our blank slate world with the seeds of our past actions. Our violent thoughts create a world of violence. Our greed creates a world of greed.
Karma is a field of seeds that ripen throughout our lives. The greatest teachers have taught that Karma ripens at death. “It is appointed unto man once to die, and after that the judgement.” That “judgement” is the seeds of our actions.
The modern Christian believes that their actions, their karma, is washed away in the blood of Jesus. But that thinking is flawed, for it leaves a trail of tears, where believers harm and hurt, then just beg for forgiveness so they can repeat their abuses.
Instead of improvement, the world I see is one of succumbing to to darkness. People have become more cruel than ever before. Those who represent the religion of compassion seem the most cruel.
If we are cruel, then the world is cruel. If we are greedy, then the world is greedy. Laughing at 10k people loosing their jobs, that has a karma too. Everything we do reflects, either now or upon our death.
What does it profit a man…
People tell me the great things our society is getting. “We are going to get more money! Once we fire these ‘useless’ people, we’ll have their income to spend on ourselves! Wait till we get the dividends from cutting AID projects to help others, we’ll have more money!”
Jesus asked, “what does it profit a man to gain the whole world at the cost of his soul?”
I’m happy to receive a check. But I don’t relish in the pain that came from it. This is a zero sum game and sometimes tough decisions have to be made, but woe to the person who enjoys the suffering they cause others. For they will receive, in exact measure, what has been dolled out.
When previous administrations laid off thousands of government workers or ended contracts that cost jobs, no one was relishing in it. No one was on X/Twitter, Facebook or YouTube pissing on the victims. Today, that’s the new norm. Those who lose their jobs are labeled the villains and then treated with utter contempt.
The Spirit of the anti-Christ
In the book, “The Spirit of the anti-Christ” by Brian Warner, this situation we are now in was predicted nearly ten years ago. He wrote about a change he saw coming across America. People turning on people. A new form of unchecked and unmasked aggression. All of the teachings of Jesus inverted and then sold by the very same faith, as the “Christian choice.”
One of the most provocative things in the book was a reference to Anton LaVey’s Satanic Bible. Warner quoted passages from the Satanic Bible, and when compared to Jesus’ opposing message and then asked the question: which is closer to our society, to our faith leaders?
How is it that the actions of those who wear their faith around their neck and on their sleeve are closer in alignment to the Satanic Bible than the teachings of Jesus?
The Sadness I feel
It isn’t just sadness for the victims of the present moment. I feel sadness for those who are in seats of judgement and false power. They sit on the slope of power, not realizing that their doom is nigh. For every peak has it’s trough. Every high has its low.
The world they are creating is not “God’s Kingdom.” They are creating a path of suffering. A path of torment. It’s predictable based on their own relish to seeing the suffering of others. Therefore they too will suffer.
Both sides of a polarized society are chewing on each other. When one is down, the other pounces and digs its claws in. When the other is down, the same.
All this pain is feeding Maya (Illusion). It is rejoicing in our ignorance, for it keeps us tilling the lands of the material world, as our afterlife is likely another cycle in these “darkly splendid abodes” wrapped in gloom.