April 9th, 2005
The road to hell seems paved with a plethora of small compromises, each seemingly minute, and of the sort, “I had to do this little bad thing to get them off my back, so that I could do the other good things.” But it is the seemingly small sins of the minute and hour that lead inexorably in the larger scheme of things to a holocaust of the mind, which closes up and dies, and becomes alien to itself. And, so it be that our once flowering civilization, once the pride and joy of mankind, hath come to this heap of mental ruins, where the sense of progress that drives us on breaks down, and the world collapses into ruin.
And history is replete with countless civilizations which have thus fallen into dust, to never rise again, becoming the curiousity of museum-goers. But, there have also been those rare cases where unique individuals who had stumbled have stepped forth to address those problems in themselves, and thus, in the wider culture.
And it has been the painful
reckoning of such ones that it were not enough to say that ”these small compromises led to hell,”
but rather that there was some lurking horror within themselves that allowed
these compromised to be made in the first place, something they had never fully
addressed and overcome, which “something”, acting as an over-riding
pseudo-principle, was the downfall of all civilization.
But the redemption of single such souls is usually also the redemption of civilization, for such ones have been the catalysts who, again and again, guided mankind through the pitfalls of his own making. These are the Joan of Arcs, the St Peters, and Martin Luther Kings, who reach to the eternal wellspring of their beings, and find the solution to the terrible paradox which threatens to tear them apart.
It is their love of mankind that gives them the strength to overcome their own weaknesses, for the benefit of future ages to come. Such ones can face even death, confident by their own sacrifice, that others shall come forth to fulfil this same principle, and that the good which hath passed before shall never be lost.
Such is the sublime principle that allows the continuity of history, so that the good of all people can have the maximum effect within the unfolding of history, and where even our mistakes can lead to a greater good.
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