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Resistance See other Resistance Articles Title: The Treasures of Hades When I was a teenager we didn't have CDs, just vinyl albums. They had lots better covers than CDs, that's for sure. But I already digress. Once I left my favorite album lying in the sunlight streaming in through my bedroom window. When I picked it up the vinyl had softened, so it warped and burned my fingers. Alas, Love it to Death was no more. The human race reminds me of that album. We started out good -- well, pretty good -- then got warped so that we burn everything we touch. Theologians claim evil is nothing but "bent" good. It makes sense. Look at Gollum from The Lord of the Rings, seduced and corrupted by power. Or Satan, who was the most favored of God, until he also got warped, also by the lust for power. These are profound stories that illustrate, for one thing, that we have some instinctive ancestral memory, in which we lived, somewhere, somehow, in a purer land, where we didn't lust for power over others. The Garden of Eden, perhaps. Or maybe the Shire, where the Hobbits live, far away from Sauron. I pay a lot of attention to mythic stories. Too bad some of them have been warped, just like my album, to the point the original tune is lost. One of those stories bent beyond almost all recognition is the one about Hades. Hades isn't a place; it's a guy, to the extent any Greek god can be "a guy." Ditto for "Hell," which isn't a place; it's a woman. Hel, the Norse goddess who was ruler of the Underworld, just as Hades was the ruler of the Greek Underworld. Those two words don't even exist in the Bible. In the New Testament Jesus used the word "Gehenna," which was a dump outside town that was always on fire. Early Christianity conflated all three of those terms to denigrate the older mythologies so that Christianity could take their place. Hence, our modern mistakes that "Hell" and "Hades" are the same thing, and are Bad Places. To this day I still don't know what Jesus meant by Gehenna, and I suspect no one else does, either. Paradoxically, "Hades" means "the Rich One." Uh, what? How's that for a sock to the brainium? It does make sense, though, and to show you I'll use an episode of Star Trek that was never filmed. Too bad. Troi: "Actually, Captain, the more significant interpretations of such myths were as metaphors for those descending into the innermost depths of their psyches, mythically descending into Hades, in order to strip away all the attachments of life, discover their souls, and in the process find pure gold and enlightenment. Initiates of the Eleusian Mysteries, for example, underwent initiations into the realm of Hades in order to lose their fear of death. Other cultures referred to the process as the 'dark night of the soul,' where riches were discovered within the dimness, coldness and darkness of the deepest recesses of the mind. It was the specter of death that brought one to Hades. Death of purpose, hope, a way of being, a relationship, even the prospect of physical death -- something often faced involuntarily." Herman: "Exactly! But some entered Hades voluntarily: Psyche to perform the last of her heroic tasks and be reunited with Eros; Orpheus to seek his wife, Eurydice; Dionysus to find his mother, Semele; and in Sumerian mythology, Inanna to seek love and wisdom, and her dark sister, Ereshkigal -- the latter who can be thought of as Inanna's dark side." Worf: "Such quests are part of Klingon heritage as well." La Forge: "To be renewed, one has to go to hell?" Troi: "Hades is not hell. Psychologically, Hades is the personal and collective unconscious, where our repressed memories, thoughts, and feelings reside, where yearnings too painful or shameful or too unacceptable to others often fester, and where everything that has ever been still exists. But Hades is also where every imaginable and wonderful possibility of what we might become, also exists!" Herman: "It's important to realize that the greatest of these myths involved those where the Goddess or hero descended into Hades voluntarily. Doctor Crusher ran into the temple voluntarily, and while we may understand her true reasons, from the Riwanian's viewpoint, it was a much more profound act." Troi: "That may well be, but these myths were metaphors, a psychological construct. One did not actually descend into the bowels of the earth." Herman: "That's true on Earth, but the Riwanians have a strong belief in a Goddess who undertakes the descent on their behalf in order to rejuvenate their world. Right now, their ancient religion may be the only tradition that has any redeeming value in their minds. To them, Crusher is their Great Goddess who has returned and begun her descent." Being mythological, "Hades" probably has multi-faceted meanings, but for now I'll just stick with it being a metaphor for the personal and collective unconscious -- whatever they are. I say, "what they are," because, personally, I don't believe in an "unconscious." I mean, if it's truly unconscious, how the Hell (snicker) is anyone going to get to it? For that matter, how would they even know it's there? "Subconscious" is a slightly better word, but I think a better definition is something that we are all aware of, but we resist paying attention to it. Maybe it's too painful, like getting kicked in the 'nads by a ninja. Art, myth and poetry brings those things to our awareness. Other things, too. It can be economics or political science. Or even Hobbits, or Gollum, or Alice Cooper. A lot of the time, when someone points out our problems, to try to make us pay attention to what we're doing and the trouble we are causing, we resist them. Maybe even most of the time. People don't want to give up their delusions, because they don't them as delusions. They see them as the truth. Like bizarre, indeed. I'll use my own little dip into Hades, for example. First, I have found the few rule the many. This would be a good thing if the few were good people. Often they're not. They may be highly intelligent, but they lack character and are obsessed with power. Usually that means they're immoral/amoral, are sexual perverts, and abuse drugs/alcohol. Character is everything, and is far more important that smarts. Many rulers have many smarts but few morals. Following Pareto, they tend to be either Foxes who use fraud, or Wolves who use force. The masses of people, unfortunately, are Sheeple who don't rise up until things get really bad for them. Then there is one of my main interests for the past several years -- the relationship between narcissism, scapegoating and human sacrifice. I have come to the conclusion that all societies engage in human sacrifice, and I'm not just talking about kids being tossed into Moloch thousands of years ago, or the Aztecs popping the hearts out of living people. I'm talking about you, buster, and the whole human race. When soldiers are sent off to war they are being human sacrificed to "save" the country. I put quotes around "save" because 99.9% of all wars are completely unnecessary, and anyone who thinks they aren't has recto-cranial inversion. We idealize these soldiers and con them into thinking their sacrifices are noble and patriotic, and they're enough of sleep-walking zombies to fall for it. It's a horror, but like all horror there is a har har! aspect to it. That's a shame, but it's true. Those who are defined as the enemy we devalue into subhumans, ones who we see as insane and evil. We make them into monsters -- cartoon monsters -- instead of people, and we delude ourselves we have to human sacrifice them by the shiploads to save ourselves. We're no different than those who tossed their babies into Moloch's belly, or cut hearts out of living people. We just use modern technology instead, and we kill a lot more people that they did. Every country, every culture, every tribe, idealizes itself as good and devalues Outsiders as a threat who have to be annihiliated. That appears to me to be the basis for genocide. That's one of the bad things that exists down there in everyone's very own personal private Hades. Including mine, otherwise I couldn't understand the whole thing. All countries, past and present, do these things. And in the future, too, I'm afraid. In a sense these wicked, wicked things we do are "subconscious": they're right below our awareness. I also think they're instinctual, showing that our humanity is overruled by brute impulse, bestial instinct, and lack of human consciousness. Some people try to point these things out, and make people aware of what we're doing. Usually they get pounded for their attempts, called traitors, and told to shut up. I respond to them as they deserve: nyah, nyah. It is almost always the rulers -- the Foxes and the Wolves -- who lead the willing Sheeple around by their noses, most often right over a cliff. They use propaganda to convince them the Outsiders are monsters who must be sacrificed. The Sheeple always fall for it -- at first. After, sometimes, millions of them are killed and they are impoverished, they wake up. Too late, suckers! Some people, and oh, are they rare, immediately understand what's going on. Others refuse to believe it, and if they have some vague understanding of it, see it as a good, or at least a necessary thing, and support it. Exactly how are they any different than those in the past who supported incinerating babies in Moloch? In essence, they're not. These terrible things, which we all do instinctly and "subconsciously," exist in Hades -- our "unconscious." There are riches down there, all right, but a lot of those truths are wayunpleasant. People resist admitting them to themselves, as valuable as they are. Not good for the ol' self-esteem, you know. Who, really, wants to admit they're engaging in a more technologically advanced and therefore worse version of bouncing babies down into the stone belly of Moloch? These days we instead burn them up with incendiary explosives. Napalm, for one. We just rationalize this mass murder as "collateral damage." Necessary, of course, to save ourselves. Just like all those ripped-out Aztec hearts were necessary to save the Aztec society. We want to believe, and believe desperately, in own own innocence and goodness, and in the evil of those we define as Outsiders. By bringing these problems from the "unconscious" into the "conscious," we can begin to deal with them. If not on a social level, at least on a personal level. If they always remain "unconscious," we will always be at their mercy, and they will always rule us. Warped as the human race is, it's not surprising we claim the Profane is actually Sacred, that Evil is actually Good. The right hand knows not what the left hand is doing; in fact, many people don't even know one of the hands is even there! And until we bring things up out of the shadows, and admit what we are, we will always be like this. It's all about the belief in monsters. Invisible ones, that knock us around, like the Monster from the Id in Forbidden Planet. Of course, and I don't think it takes Mr. Obvious to tell us, we're the ones who are the monsters.
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