The Revolution Will Be Immortalized
Myths illustrate the human condition. Turns out we love to fight.
The mind is its own place and in itself can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.
John Milton, Paradise Lost
Dodging screeching protesters on the freeway some years back, I noted a certain religious mood among them. Probably the same mood those building Stonehenge felt. Definitely the same mood those defacing Stonehenge felt.1
Just as learning isn’t limited to school, religion isn't limited to a church or a temple. It only requires a cause. We are religious about tons of stuff, most of which appears to have little to do with gods. But in terms of politics, we are as devout or impious as we can be. One need only look at the stories we tell to see this.
If a swaying, chanting mob of grannies demanding an income tax isn't enough. Yeah, Seattle wants an income tax because the crooks convinced geriatric dementors it was a good idea to tax labor. It doesn’t have to make sense. It has to make them feel good.2
Nothing makes us feel better than myths. Lies. So, let me tell you a couple stories.
A favorite of mine is Paradise Lost3, a story regarding the war between the Abrahamic God and the Satan Lucifer. When God created humans, he commanded Lucifer and his angels to kneel, who refused. For this, he was cast out of Heaven, exiled into the earth.
This is the most popular interpretation of the story. But there is also the idea, clear as poetry ever gets to me, Lucifer got what he wanted. A timeshare free of God’s hand and capricious commands. He agitated for and received his own kingdom to rule. His rebellion succeeded. If God won, he also lost. He gained nothing from it. He lost a lot of his labor force in the bowels of the earth.
In Paradise Lost it is surprisingly tragic how human Lucifer seems to be. The least surprising element for me is how appropriately human God appears to be. It seems a story of the status quo versus change. A new way rising up against and changing the bedrock of an established order. A new fountainhead of law percolating through time.
Jurists call this a living constitution in secular legal affairs.4
No one lost but those who feared and hated change. Whoever that may be is open to interpretation. Well, that and whoever died in the pursuit of Satan’s lovely new umbral timeshare. Like most activism, the cost is rarely acknowledged once success arrives.
This same story is told and interpreted somewhat differently by the Yazidi tribe rolling around the Levant area we call the middle east for some reason.
In their version of the story, the angel refusing to bow is not the Satan, but a figure named Melek Taus, the Peacock Angel.5 When commanded to bow to man, this angel indeed refused as in Paradise Lost. But the twist arrives with their motivation.
This refusal is not from pride. Melek Taus obeys a previous dictate from God to bow to none but God, including God telling them to bow to man. An unbending obeisance to a previous command. Far from being punished, Melek Taus is given the earth to rule.
If one has an issue with reality television, or social media, or anything else going on down here, one can blame Melek Taus for just letting it happen. God has taken the Machiavellian route and propped up a lieutenant for us to blame instead of them.
Crafty! But you don’t get to be God if you’re not crafty. And in this version, you don’t get to be the Devil unless you obey God to the letter. God’s commands are eternal, closed to further innovation, even if God says otherwise. Now that’s faith, friends.
Jurists call this one originalism in law circles.6 Originalists are heroes in the Yazidi story but not the Christian story. Criss-cross!
Such a tiny difference in the same plot has fueled conflict for centuries. Fanatics have pursued the Yazidi over the years intent on exterminating them for this interpretation. You can find a similar dynamic playing out regarding whether Han or Greedo shot first.
It is perfectly obvious Han shot first and when God tells you not to kneel to anything or anyone but God, they mean that. If you’re Yazidi. Obviously, if you’re a Christian, you really like the idea of God changing their mind and handing out confused commands.
It’s hard to rule the earth and be rich if Jesus says a rich man is too fat to fit in the eye of a needle.7 Truly, a diabolic conundrum for people of all ages. Or just the rich.
Enough with the Satan stuff, though. Everyone knows Lucifer was a revolutionary and if he had his way, you would be too. Let’s look at something earthier than the King of the Earth, if just barely. It also is a myth, but one with some small historical evidence.
Interestingly enough, God plays the rebel in this one. The Devil hasn't been cast out yet. The Devil is already ruling the earth at the story’s start.
The story of Exodus is one of a house divided against itself. The Great House of Egypt adopted a baby found floating down the river and raised him as their own. He was not in line to become the next Pharaoh, but he was raised alongside him as his brother.
During his time as a member of the royal house he witnesses an injustice and murders the architect of said crime. Rather than relying on a pass as family member of a living god, he flees to the wilds, where he meets another god. But this one is super-jealous and not terribly reasonable, considering they capitalize their name and not the others’.
This desert god promises Moses a timeshare of his own. Kind of. Technically, no one who remembers Egypt will be allowed the Promised Land. Not even Moses reaches it alive. I deal with this in another essay called Don’t Trust Anyone Over Thirty. For now, remember the rebel wants a kingdom and to get it a god must be forced to give it up.
It's probably relevant.
But the God of Moses doesn't stand for any other gods. He didn't claw his way out of the bottom of a massive pantheon of brothers and sisters to tolerate competition. Pride is his alone.
When Moses demands Pharaoh release the majority of his labor force for absolutely nothing in return, he gives his brother-turned-traitor the royal finger. In return, his traitor brother unleashes the famous ten plagues on Egypt, including his family.
When Pharaoh's son is murdered alongside countless others, he relents. Moses and his new people wander into the desert in search of the slice of heaven their god sold them. Their time wandering is harsh, but at least at the end of it, they got to kill a lot of people and take their stuff. They setup a nation devoted to their One God.
The revolution comes full circle. Pride drove the day again, just as it had in Paradise Lost.
God fought and won a kingdom for himself. But to Egypt, paradise drowned in a sea of reeds. The Hebrews, flush with victory, found their pride in the struggle and their brand-spanking new, totally real One God who didn't reveal himself until his competition died. Well, those left alive found their pride. The rest not so much.
Everyone who turned their face from monotheism on Mt. Sinai? They got murdered.8 It doesn’t take long for a god to start justifying slaughter. It was immediate for the One God, in fact. That’s the thing with monotheism. There is but one true law to follow.
Thou shalt have no gods beside me. In our lucid moments, we call this fanaticism. It takes a certain pride, a concerted conceit, to believe one exclusively knows the truth. It takes a will to interfere or even kill to make it the exclusive truth for everyone else.
I’ve always taken thought-crime to be a victimless crime. Whoever believes it a crime simply hasn’t thought hard enough about it. Go on, give it a think. Then consider how those thoughts never turned into action. Then realize this is supposedly a crime.
You can find this zeal in most political movements. Religiosity. It requires pride, though not in one’s individual self. Pride in a group, a mass, a collective, something a person can give themselves up to if they feel no pride of their own. Like they can be proud as gods, too. Even if their god forbids it. But, only after using it to win their own kingdom.
Certainty is a sword, always cutting both ways, but shedding blood no matter where it is swung. Because humans are dumb monkeys. Certainty makes us proud while also arising from pride. It’s a feedback loop, fueled by fanaticism. It is faith in ourselves, not god, which makes us so certain. A spinning wheel with no end in sight. Revolution.
Pride destroyed the Pharaoh, liberated the Hebrews, destroyed many Canaanites, and demoted all the pagan gods to demons and devils. The old ways, once recognized as the only certain good in a crazy, gods damned world, were now evil and base. Was paradise lost? Or heaven attained? Depends on who won.
Revolutions fail to do away with their enemy entirely. Despite the stated intent, killing your enemy entirely is never as profitable or practical as becoming them. Political revolutions are always the story of rebels becoming oppressors given the opportunity.
Or rather, the oppressed taking the opportunity for themselves. Today’s downtrodden are tomorrow’s downtrodders, so long as political power is the goal of the revolution, and it almost always is. There are exceptions. Cultural revolutions happen all the time.
These can be tiny things, like attempting to convince everyone Greedo shot first. And they don’t have to be as vicious or bare fanged as the Chinese Cultural Revolution. No person needs to die. Just kill enough people’s good sense and replace it with pride.
Revolution and the battle between good and evil, god and the devil, or George Lucas and George Lucas, make excellent metaphors for political history. But the result of Moses’ revolution inverted the meaning of pride. To pagans, the devil won that one. To Christians, their god won. To the Yazidi, they just want you to leave them alone.
An usurping traitor given all the benefits of a heavenly existence rejected it all from pride. Moses, raised in the Great House, destroyed his own home through rebellion from a desire to have his own somewhere far away. His own home to house his pride.
His own slice of heaven, where it was better to rule than to serve, which ended up not much better than the old gods it fought against. They never killed all the pagans, nor did they destroy paganism, but they did build up a religious theocracy of their own.
They regularly waved their arms in the air just like Pharaoh, they just said different words. In their pride, they believed it to be the exclusive truth. They crafted conceit through a new status quo. The only question I have is which came first. God or Pride?
Pride will destroy the One God someday too, no doubt. Human affairs are transient and there is very little more preciously human than stories about gods and devils. We use them in our stead to explain motivations, passions, desires, murder, all of it.
Myths contain everything we are afraid to look at in ourselves, but desperately need to communicate to each other all the same. We tell lies and comfort ourselves saying they are truer than the truth somehow. In our pride. It doesn’t compute and never will.
And therein lies pride’s downfall. Humans are diverse. I mean really diverse, not the kind of kindergarten understanding that limits such things to the experience people with different genitals or skin colors have. I mean different minds for infinite reasons.
There will always be a difference of opinion in all things at all times. There will always be a status quo, a way things are. And there will always be an adversary to that, an enemy, whether one believes it to be the devil, their god, or whatever.
Satan literally means Adversary, by the way. Could be relevant. Even useful if one intends to prop up the status quo. Because when you're in charge, change is evil. When you're not, well, you spend more time cursing the gods. Just how it shakes out.
So long as someone can frame it as good versus evil, order versus chaos, countless revolutionary stories will remain relevant. I only picked three because word count. We tend to think the status quo is good by default. Sometimes, it is. But mostly, it’s vanity.
In our arrogance, we often consider politics a game. In our conceit, we believe religion and politics are different things. In our certainty, we allow no correction to either. This is fanaticism. But this revolutionary dynamic is too important to leave untold.
So, we tell stories about revolution dressed in a divine finery. The only thing humans seem to enjoy more than themselves are stories about others, so long as they’re truly about us in the end. Whether we call ourselves Satan or God is a matter of authority.
It is said pride comes before the fall, and this is true, so long as the proud are running the show. Rulers cannot afford to be so proud they overlook threats to their rule. But if one is fighting their rulers, pride comes before their rise. To rise beyond their place.
The Pharaohs of Egypt would tell you this if they could. I’m absolutely certain of it and I’ll fight any gods damned infidel who says otherwise. Nor will I suffer a Han-Shot-First Denier to live. I’m an originalist in that way.
But if I had the opportunity to change the law? To make Pro-Greedo-Devils illegal? Living constitutionalist in a heartbeat. That's just how change works here and looking around this joint, at the deified status quo, I'm pretty sure I'm not the one running it.
Yet.
Sic vivitur.