“Only the rudeness of human sacrifice has been lost with time; human sacrifice itself has remained unabated, and criminals hourly fall sacrifices to justice, and we ‘poor sinners’ slay our own selves as sacrifices for ‘the human essence,’ the ‘idea of mankind,’ ‘humanity,’ and whatever the idols or gods are called besides.” – Max Stirner
What I am about to say about the #OrlandoShooting may be misinterpreted, but I’ll say it anyway.
The Trickster or Crossroads god has always been the chief ally of any sorcerer, and indeed is often the one that bestows the gifts of magic. The Trickster god is the one who flaunts social convention, laughs at law, and points out hypocrisy.
Sorcerers, by nature, tend do the same.
The shooting in Orlando is horrific, sad, but truthfully not surprising. These things happens about every 2 1/2 weeks in the US, though the added “terror” element makes it a little unique.
Still, not surprising.
My personal feed is blowing up with terrified middle class straight people, who have no connection to the event yet seem intent on feeding at the trough of other people’s sadness, expressing how “shocked” they are at the violence.
Weren’t you just posting a meme about shooting a transgender person if she uses the same bathroom as your daughter? Since when the fuck do you give a shit? Is it the bloodshed that bothers you? Drone strikes pulverize children daily yet you never seem to bat an eye at that!
No, your concern is a cowardly fear for your own personal safety, a darkness swirling on the horizon you can’t stand to look at. What you REALLY can’t believe is that something that happens in OTHER PLACES might actually happen close to you, and now you’ll rail about guns or schools or really any fucking thing to feel safe again.
Imagine: nearly a decade of Imperial tyranny and bloodshed, human corpses ground up into dust by bomb after bomb yet we’re SHOCKED that those people might do something here!
Get ready for the morality plays! How this act was unconscionable, unexcusable, and unthinkable, yet nobody thinks about how magically such things change when the killer wears a uniform! Then it’s heroic, noble, and “service” to one’s cause! One’s “people!”
How quickly human life can move from valuable to worthless, all in the names of ideals!
Perhaps I am jaded, but these knee jerk reactions make me sick. I see nothing but two groups of people lost in clouds: a shooter who killed innocent people for the sexual hang-ups of a “prophet” long since dead and a pack of patriotic parakeets already pissing themselves in fear. American churches should be packed with feeble-minded squids uttering prayers to their god that he doesn’t give them AN INCH of what their tax dollars, ballots, and bullets give the people of the world everyday.
The ACTUAL victims, the real people injured or dead, are subsumed into the IDEA of the thing. We are not outraged at the loss of life, these universes and interior worlds gone forever. We are instead angry that such things are shoved in front of us. “How dare they!” Dare? Dare against what? YOUR sanctity of life, the same thing you so eagerly deny to others? The SAME sanctity not a week ago you were ready to deny to gay and trans folks when it suited you? And what of the sanctity of those still living, of the woman raped behind a dumpster and forced to watch her monster walk away almost unscathed? What of her “sanctity?”
Justice, sanctity, tragedy, horror…these things mean nothing. They are only words that you use to color your subjective experiences with the veneer of some universal, platonic value.
Truly the Joker let wisdom fall from his lips when he said: “See, their morals, their code… it’s a bad joke. Dropped at the first sign of trouble. ”
But…that’s how it is, and the whole thing reveals itself to be a dark and ludicrous comedy: people acting not so much as people but plants swaying in the wind of the subconscious impulses and spooks that move them.
And it’ll stay like this as long as human life is cheap, plentiful, and easily utilized.
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