In the past couple of weeks, I have had several conversations with intelligent, thoughtful people that in some way involved the objective existence of God. My usual position on this topic is that I find Him/Her/It unprovable and, more to the point, not that worth discussing. Robert De Grimston, in his piece GOD Is, in 1967 wrote, “GOD cannot be defined or described. To describe GOD is to define GOD, and to define GOD is to limit GOD to a finite, limited existence.” This didn’t stop him writing at great length about God (or GOD), but I still find his 1967 comment apposite. So, to ascribe a distinct personality to the Infinite may be a correct view, but it’s impossible for us to say much about it, one way or the other. I will acknowledge there is a universe beyond what I conventionally define as my ‘self’, I will acknowledge that universe has other self-identifying monads in it, and I acknowledge it all appears to follow rules that allow it to sustain itself. Beyond that, I draw a theological blank.
On a much less grand scale, I have drawn a blank on everything else the past week or two. The western world has acknowledged global warming as a real threat, Iraq’s near-civil war state as a fact, and the presidential candidacies of Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton as both inevitable and plausibly viable. The fact that his smoking and her being a woman are possible blockages to their electability is viewed as bizarre in other countries, where women prime ministers and smoking presidents are hardly rare or remarkable. But I don’t have a piece for this blog on either of them. Right now, I cannot imagine anybody whatsoever doing a good job if passed the poisoned chalice of the American presidency, and so I have nothing to say about the two Democratic front-runners.
Perhaps that’s my problem. I’ve not given up on a sense that a Thelemic Aeon is unfolding and progressing, but I can’t imagine what that involves at the moment, other than it doesn’t necessarily seem to involve a western-powers dominance of global discourse. On the surface, nothing looks like it will work out well. The seeming collapse of American might, prestige and common-sense under George W. Bush has left a hole that’s being filled by ... who knows what?
I keep wondering if it’s just the time of year, here in the northern hemisphere. It’s still cold, and the days are short, and it’s just a strange time. Bill Clinton’s later presidency was messy, too, but he didn’t get his country into a war it couldn’t control, let alone win, and it was mostly only Bill who suffered. Right now, Canada seems stuck in a limbo with a prime minister who can’t quite swallow the fact that his policies are a decade out of date, and a large southern neighbour that doesn’t entirely grasp how it’s spinning its wheels while it constructs a mega-mountain of debt.
But even that doesn’t quite explain it. I have to come back to the idea that personally, I just don’t have a clue what I think at the moment. This condition, in modern North American culture, is usually seen as a moral failure as well as an intellectual one. There are TV newspersons on major street corners waiting to pounce, asking me to expose my lack of understanding on some semi-irrelevant issue-of-the-day, as there are pollsters calling me every night at 8.00 pm for my statistically assessable opinions.
As I write this, it occurs to me that other people I’ve spoken to recently are in the same boat - and that includes the God-exists folks. We don’t actually know any more what’s going on. So, is this perhaps a step forward in the Aeon - a suspension of the normal life-evaluation process? A hiatus in opinion-forming that allows a deeper collective intuition to come to the fore? Are we beginning to recognise new degrees of human absurdity, as we seek for deeper inspiration?
God -or GOD - knows. I have nothing to add at this time.