Thank you. In the Divine Comedy Virgil and Dante are getting ready to walk into Dix. Virgil says don’t look at the Gorgon because you won’t come out alive. Then he points to a Messenger striding through who touches the gates and they swing open.
The Apocalypse mocks the powers too. “I heard the voice saying Behold the Lion of the Tribe of Judah, the Root of David has conquered and I turned and saw a Lamb that had been slain.” A little lamb conquers the big bad beast.
Reversed Thunder by Eugene Peterson is also great about the Apocalypse.
This is so faith building. Thank you again. God’s richest blessings on your writing.
I had not thought about that line as mocking the powers, but you’re absolutely right. The lamb slain is one I plan to write more on. Thank you for bringing these additional images to us. And thank you for the kind words as well.
You’re welcome. I took a year long class on Revelation from the Open Table folks—Brad Jersak, Father John Behr, Paul Young among others. I think it was Jersak who coined that idea— how the little lamb mocked the big bad beast.
Your post brought back to me the victory—that death is dead.
Speaking of the many ways that satan or the devil works to destroy all that is True and Beautiful, and of narcissus too, it could be said that the most narcissistic person in the US is the now-time vehicle to complete such destruction.
Nicely done Meg. The battle has been won as you say but casualties are still occurring. Believers get no safe passage without scars and sorrows here on this side of creation. One of our most effective weapons against despair is Wonder. Wonder points towards a beauty and a hope that AI and the machine will never be able to supply
Hello, what a great piece of writing, I've had some thoughts on it which I'd like to share with you.
Firstly, the Apple ad is a really interesting phenomenon. It makes no sense on a commercial level to upset large numbers of your target audience, or to inflict intentional reputational damage. And I believe the Apple CEO when he said that it was a miscalculation and no malice was intended.
So on a conscious level, neither the advertising agency nor the senior executives in Apple realised how badly this would land with their audience.
So what's happening here then?
In my opinion, what's going on in this ad is at an unconscious level, at the bedrock of assumptions on which the tech and marketing industry operates. Among these are,
-all technological progress is good and should supplant previous tools/technologies. Computers are better than guitars, paintbrushes and anything analogue. These things are now weak, fragile and useless. They are the past, the computer is the future. Crush them all.
-destructive power feels good, and makes way for something better, 'move fast and break things'. There is no bridge between the past and the future. It reminds of what the Pope is supposed to have said at Beziers when asked if Catholics were among those who might be massacred. ‘Kill them all, God will know his own.
And this is what makes this ad so distasteful, because anyone with an ounce of intuition can pick up on these assumptions and the raw will to power which undergirds them.
So why can't these supposedly intelligent senior management people see this? I think they can't because they are embedded in the culture of the tech industry itself. No one talks about what everyone already knows.
And now to your second point, where is stuff coming from? I really liked your quote from your friend who writes about Revelations:
The fundamental conviction of apocalyptic literature is that “things are not as they seem”; there is more to reality than meets the unaided eyes or ears; there is more to the present historical moment than we can deduce. And apocalyptic writing seeks to unveil that unseen reality of the present, to pull back the curtain on the present so that we can see what is really going on.”
I completely agree. I submit that the 'unseen reality of the present' is the set of deeply flawed ideologies which are in the zeitgeist (itself a revealing word). Neoliberalism, the worship of technology, the devaluation of human worth (that quote about 'what is the value of a human being?, knocked me sideways).
All of these things are ideas held by large groups of people, unexamined, and are all pervasive . They shape our societies, guide our politicians and business people, design our houses, fuel our assumptions about nature, education, sexuality, disability, what is worth doing, who is worthy of life. They are not passive agents, they are active creators in the world. I believe they are 'spiritual powers', activated by human, and increasingly non human hands.
We don't see them because we are wedded to the idea of a 'buffered self', an autonomous individual, captain of their soul, who is impervious to the currents of thought we all swim in as an encultured member of society.
And if the people who hold these ideas genuinely do not realize how inhuman and offensive they can be to the rest of us, as happened in the Apple ad, where are these ideas coming from? Unresolved trauma in individuals percolated through education and marketing? Are we living the unresolved Oedipal issues of Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos amplified through the superstructure of their extended consciousness via their companies?
Anyway, hope this has been helpful, and thank you again for the writing, really enjoyed the piece.
PS That picture of Moloch will keep me awake tonight!
Thanks for weighing in here, B. Whether we call it a collective unconscious, unexamined assumptions, the zeitgeist (yes, the "spirit" of the time) or principalities and powers, seems to me it all amounts to the same thing. Perhaps the advantage to seeing it as something having its own agency is that it helps us to still love people who are under these delusions, to not see them as the enemy, but rather to encourage them to see beyond the veil as well.
I think you're not wrong in looking at people's wounding/trauma as entry points for these "ideas."
The connection to your comment on another piece of mine regarding the power of images (memes, etc.) intrigued me. My main point here, one that I perhaps didn't flesh out enough at the end, is that images are powerful. They influence us whether we want them to or not. So therefore, let's focus on a better image. One that has both hope, wonder and truth in it. It goes back to the idea that we conform to what we focus on.
On that note, sorry for putting the Moloch image in your mind! Ultimately, I believe that to be a redemptive image, in that it reveals the true nature of something. Maybe I'm wrong. It bothered me for weeks after I discovered it and I kept going back to look at it. That was 11 years ago now, but the truth it taught me has endured.
Please don’t apologise for the image, I had exactly the same reaction as you. The question is why? Why do we both recognise a terrifying truth in an image?
I’m always willing to explore the topics of toxic memes/egregores/archetypes, there’s a rich seam there to explore....
But not tonight, I’m going to try and count sheep and say my prayers...😃
Thank you. In the Divine Comedy Virgil and Dante are getting ready to walk into Dix. Virgil says don’t look at the Gorgon because you won’t come out alive. Then he points to a Messenger striding through who touches the gates and they swing open.
The Apocalypse mocks the powers too. “I heard the voice saying Behold the Lion of the Tribe of Judah, the Root of David has conquered and I turned and saw a Lamb that had been slain.” A little lamb conquers the big bad beast.
Reversed Thunder by Eugene Peterson is also great about the Apocalypse.
This is so faith building. Thank you again. God’s richest blessings on your writing.
I had not thought about that line as mocking the powers, but you’re absolutely right. The lamb slain is one I plan to write more on. Thank you for bringing these additional images to us. And thank you for the kind words as well.
You’re welcome. I took a year long class on Revelation from the Open Table folks—Brad Jersak, Father John Behr, Paul Young among others. I think it was Jersak who coined that idea— how the little lamb mocked the big bad beast.
Your post brought back to me the victory—that death is dead.
Ah Jersak is a local, and knowing him a little, that doesn’t surprise me. Behr has been highly recommended to me as one to read asap.
Death is indeed dead. That sounds like a rallying cry for the Machine Age: “Fear not! Death is dead!”
Speaking of the many ways that satan or the devil works to destroy all that is True and Beautiful, and of narcissus too, it could be said that the most narcissistic person in the US is the now-time vehicle to complete such destruction.
Meet Narcissus in Chief http://godblesstheusabible.com
Nicely done Meg. The battle has been won as you say but casualties are still occurring. Believers get no safe passage without scars and sorrows here on this side of creation. One of our most effective weapons against despair is Wonder. Wonder points towards a beauty and a hope that AI and the machine will never be able to supply
There's a preacher in you wanting to get out. Well done.
Never really thought of it as preaching. Perhaps some of Darrell J's preaching anointing influenced me here. Nevertheless, speaking, perhaps?
Oh thank you. It’s such a great piece that it will take me a little time to unpack, I’m still reeling from the quote:
what is so important, so valuable, about the human anyway?
The tech bros are now saying the quiet part out loud...
Yes, it appears so. This season since 2020 has been one of unveiling what is really going on, behind the scenes, in the spiritual realm.
Hello, what a great piece of writing, I've had some thoughts on it which I'd like to share with you.
Firstly, the Apple ad is a really interesting phenomenon. It makes no sense on a commercial level to upset large numbers of your target audience, or to inflict intentional reputational damage. And I believe the Apple CEO when he said that it was a miscalculation and no malice was intended.
So on a conscious level, neither the advertising agency nor the senior executives in Apple realised how badly this would land with their audience.
So what's happening here then?
In my opinion, what's going on in this ad is at an unconscious level, at the bedrock of assumptions on which the tech and marketing industry operates. Among these are,
-all technological progress is good and should supplant previous tools/technologies. Computers are better than guitars, paintbrushes and anything analogue. These things are now weak, fragile and useless. They are the past, the computer is the future. Crush them all.
-destructive power feels good, and makes way for something better, 'move fast and break things'. There is no bridge between the past and the future. It reminds of what the Pope is supposed to have said at Beziers when asked if Catholics were among those who might be massacred. ‘Kill them all, God will know his own.
And this is what makes this ad so distasteful, because anyone with an ounce of intuition can pick up on these assumptions and the raw will to power which undergirds them.
So why can't these supposedly intelligent senior management people see this? I think they can't because they are embedded in the culture of the tech industry itself. No one talks about what everyone already knows.
And now to your second point, where is stuff coming from? I really liked your quote from your friend who writes about Revelations:
The fundamental conviction of apocalyptic literature is that “things are not as they seem”; there is more to reality than meets the unaided eyes or ears; there is more to the present historical moment than we can deduce. And apocalyptic writing seeks to unveil that unseen reality of the present, to pull back the curtain on the present so that we can see what is really going on.”
I completely agree. I submit that the 'unseen reality of the present' is the set of deeply flawed ideologies which are in the zeitgeist (itself a revealing word). Neoliberalism, the worship of technology, the devaluation of human worth (that quote about 'what is the value of a human being?, knocked me sideways).
All of these things are ideas held by large groups of people, unexamined, and are all pervasive . They shape our societies, guide our politicians and business people, design our houses, fuel our assumptions about nature, education, sexuality, disability, what is worth doing, who is worthy of life. They are not passive agents, they are active creators in the world. I believe they are 'spiritual powers', activated by human, and increasingly non human hands.
We don't see them because we are wedded to the idea of a 'buffered self', an autonomous individual, captain of their soul, who is impervious to the currents of thought we all swim in as an encultured member of society.
And if the people who hold these ideas genuinely do not realize how inhuman and offensive they can be to the rest of us, as happened in the Apple ad, where are these ideas coming from? Unresolved trauma in individuals percolated through education and marketing? Are we living the unresolved Oedipal issues of Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos amplified through the superstructure of their extended consciousness via their companies?
Anyway, hope this has been helpful, and thank you again for the writing, really enjoyed the piece.
PS That picture of Moloch will keep me awake tonight!
Thanks for weighing in here, B. Whether we call it a collective unconscious, unexamined assumptions, the zeitgeist (yes, the "spirit" of the time) or principalities and powers, seems to me it all amounts to the same thing. Perhaps the advantage to seeing it as something having its own agency is that it helps us to still love people who are under these delusions, to not see them as the enemy, but rather to encourage them to see beyond the veil as well.
I think you're not wrong in looking at people's wounding/trauma as entry points for these "ideas."
The connection to your comment on another piece of mine regarding the power of images (memes, etc.) intrigued me. My main point here, one that I perhaps didn't flesh out enough at the end, is that images are powerful. They influence us whether we want them to or not. So therefore, let's focus on a better image. One that has both hope, wonder and truth in it. It goes back to the idea that we conform to what we focus on.
On that note, sorry for putting the Moloch image in your mind! Ultimately, I believe that to be a redemptive image, in that it reveals the true nature of something. Maybe I'm wrong. It bothered me for weeks after I discovered it and I kept going back to look at it. That was 11 years ago now, but the truth it taught me has endured.
Please don’t apologise for the image, I had exactly the same reaction as you. The question is why? Why do we both recognise a terrifying truth in an image?
I’m always willing to explore the topics of toxic memes/egregores/archetypes, there’s a rich seam there to explore....
But not tonight, I’m going to try and count sheep and say my prayers...😃
‘A loveless world is a sightless world,’ from John 14 in church this morning. Thanks for everyone here tugging away to lift the veil