CSvax:cmh@pur-ee.UUCP (08/05/83)
Tim Maroney's views on Thelema are interesting in light of disclaimer two, that religion may be adopted as model of reality in order to explore con- sequences on human development. Indeed, such an approach can be productive. Reading Tim's "even if I DID believe" I think that essay's basic flaw is the attitude of blaming. Now blaming is a very common trait in all of us, and its sorry consequences can be seen from geopolitics right down to peoples lives. So, how does Thelema tackle it? Surely without having come to grips with blaming, anger, conceit, and other destructive traits, it is a bit premature to talk of humanity as having achieved God-like status? Chris. (cmh at Purdue)
tim@unc.UUCP (08/06/83)
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
This article is my response to the short article from Chris
Hoffman reprinted directly below.
Tim Maroney's views on Thelema are interesting in
light of disclaimer two, that religion may be adopted
as model of reality in order to explore consequences
on human development. Indeed, such an approach can be
productive. Reading Tim's "even if I DID believe" I
think that essay's basic flaw is the attitude of
blaming.
Now blaming is a very common trait in all of us,
and its sorry consequences can be seen from
geopolitics right down to peoples lives. So, how does
Thelema tackle it? Surely without having come to
grips with blaming, anger, conceit, and other
destructive traits, it is a bit premature to talk of
humanity as having achieved God-like status?
In my introduction to Thelemism, in the section entitled "The New
Aeon", I said that "We are gods because of the magnitude of the things
we do." You seem to have read this as "We have become like gods
because of our moral virtues." That is not what I said. Our morality,
or lack thereof, is not what makes us gods, or what keeps us from
being gods. Our powers make us gods. We can do virtually all the
things ascribed to gods in legend. (Bruce Smith, by the way, came up
with an interesting counterexample: The power of self-creation is not
something we're likely to have any time soon. I never said we had ALL
the powers...) That power forces certain responsibilities on us -- it
is obvious that a group of god without morals can create nothing but
chaos and destruction. The lack of morality among us gods is the
problem; it doesn't make us any less gods, though.
So much for the recap. Now, about blaming. Was it wrong for the
Allies to blame the Nazis for the Second World War? Should they have
said, "Blaming is a bad trait, let's just let them do anything they
want with their minorities?" Would it be wrong for me to be angry at a
man who, say, raped my mother? Is that self-destructive and
undesirable? If a leader of men orders the massacre of entire
populations, should I not blame him? The latter is what I did in my
essay "Even If I DID Believe..." and I see nothing wrong in it.
Your statements seem to contain a sort of extremist pacifism that
is quite foreign to Thelema. Obstacles, that is, Restrictions, are
to be gotten around if relatively harmless, and destroyed utterly
otherwise. There is no other point of view that I would call moral.
You may admire Gandhi (sp?) for pacifism, but did you know that he
thought the Jews should have walked to their deaths in World War II
without struggle? Do you call that moral? The only moral recourse
for the Allies was war.
It is overly simplistic to say that "blaming and anger are bad".
Faced with certain extreme Restrictions, such as murder and rape, they
are the only proper response. They have the potential for abuse, of
course, but as I have demonstrated so does pacifism. All are
essential to moral conduct.
Love is the law, love under will.
Tim Maroney
duke!unc!tim (USENET)
tim.unc@udel-relay (ARPA)
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill