Divine Plagiarism

I wrote this a few years back for a class. Gergen's, I think. Maybe it was Heifetz. Probably Heifetz, way more Jedi/ninja-esque. Anyways...

"This is a wicked generation. It asks for a miraculous sign, but none will be given it except the sign of Jonah. For as Jonah was a sign to the Ninevites, so also will the Son of Man be to this generation. The Queen of the South will rise at the judgment with the men of this generation and condemn them; for she came from the ends of the earth to listen to Solomon's wisdom, and now one greater than Solomon is here. The men of Nineveh will stand up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it; for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and now one greater than Jonah is here." – Jesus (as told by Luke.)

To avoid our own troubling realities, we build monuments to those who conquered theirs. We look to the individual victories to avoid the much scarier reality of our nature, of all the things that humanity has never conquered within itself. Humanity still loves to appropriate rights for themselves that belong to others and put nice names on doing so. The only thing that has really changed is that we now have a broader vocabulary to do this with. We decry others' injustices past, but only injustices we can comfortably denounce, usually done by those who have come before us. We conveniently overlook our own leanings toward injustice, and we deliberately, although ostensibly subconsciously, overlook the convenient injustices our societies tolerate. Why? Because we want to pretend that we've changed, that we've gotten better.

Ignoring our own oppressions while lauding those who have conquered oppression in the past allows us the fiction that oppression has been defeated, and allows us the even more dangerous notion that whatever it is inside us that drives us to oppress is no more. Thus we stick our heads in the sand, and enjoy our conveniences and stolen liberties that by all rights belong to others. And we feel no guilt. Those who seek to wake us up from this hazy dream-world, those who seek to make us look beyond this façade we have constructed to the maelstrom of the real, we hate them. We hate their message because we like our lies. Humanity loves to tell itself that it seeks truth. It does not. It seeks power. It seeks control.

We are terrified of not being in charge of our own world. We have seen life's unfairness tear apart our dreams, and thus scarred, we vow to never let it happen again. We have been violated by those with whom we have been vulnerable, and we vow 'never again.' But actual reality does not afford us this vow. The only way we can ensure never being hurt is to control every variable in our world. We pretend that we can do this by gaining as much power and authority as possible, and by categorizing all beyond our power and control into little tiny boxes from which nothing can escape and hurt us. We have constructed fictional worlds where we can be safe, where we don't have to fear, even if that means we never get to live. We build our walls; we surround our small worlds with them so that nothing can hurt us. So that we are never, ever vulnerable. Because we are so very afraid. All of us.

Thus, when ever someone tries to drag us out of our little world into the real one, we react like a cornered, scared animal. We attack to preserve our security. We attack out of fear of being vulnerable again. And those who try, the prophets, we silence them. We who so laud our love of truth destroy truth when it makes us uncomfortable. Their death is a small price compared to our security and false invulnerability. So to Aristotle, hemlock; to Dr. King, a bullet; to Christ, a cross. And we remain safe until the next prophet comes. And we laud the prophets of old while we kill our own. Things don't change. We seek not truth, but power. Authority figures seek power. Leaders serve truth. We do not want to be leaders. We fear leaders. We hate leaders. And ultimately, we kill leaders. We fear and seek control. We are afraid of being led. So we set up figure heads we can control, which will allow us to lead ourselves. We, in turn, are only led by our fears. This is why we kill the prophets. We hate truth.