Sacred

Words And The Subtleties Of Their Meanings

As I continue to write, I’ve noticed that the direct act of writing takes a backseat most of the time to a host of other related tasks: noticing, pondering, building the conceptual scaffolding of an essay, sensing that a concept I’m working on has tangents that could all be little essays themselves. Put together they could be a book.

Mapping feels more accurate at times. Instead of writing something that exists inside of me, I experience it more like discovering a phenomenon. Mapping that can take days or weeks of intermittent study and discussions.

A big part of my style of writing is noticing things. Dismantling movies and songs, messages, social movements, and propaganda. Scrutinizing. Not always judgmentally or critically either. Getting under the surface of a song, a movie or an idea seems to be the main thrust. From there one can use it as a way to see the culture, the nation, the individual. All roads lead to Rome.

Lately, words and their manifold meanings interest me. I sense, more specifically, how certain words get co-opted by: religions, movements, institutions, political parties, musical genres etc. It’s not necessarily good or bad, but it’s constant, this drift in meaning.

We must be aware of the ways in which our words are used. Often we get into debates because two people mean two different things when discussing something. Someone gets offended by the connotation they assume the person meant.

Words are so often insufficient. The map is not the territory. We struggle to describe what we see, feel, experience and truly mean. Futile attempts to connect through words can be maddening and destructive.

As I’m pre-writing for a half dozen essays, I see how important words have been co-opted by the aforementioned institutions. I don’t mean to pick on religion, but some of the most obvious and clear cases, for me, come from a very Chrisitanized view of specific words. Most of these words are virtues, like faith.

In Christianity, faith means to believe without proof. To believe in one’s salvation. To believe that Jesus died for your sins. Since we are a nation with such a large population of Christians, we have loosely adopted many of the suppositions, traditions and mindsets of our dominant religion--for better or worse.

And yet, a non-religious view of faith is still applicable and useful as a counter point. That faith is a different animal, though related. We can have trust in others, in their innate goodness. We can have a good-faith discussion. In this case, faith is honoring the rules of intellectual honesty.

In an upcoming movie review, I noticed how a character used faith that his actions would be worthwhile because people matter. In that realization, I noticed how I had previously and unconsciously taken on the religious meaning of the word—the specific promises and theology of Christianity.

When I examined that idea, I noticed that this belief system creates an external locus of control. Have faith that God will do this act or that God has done that act which saves you. This amounts to faith in something or someone external. An atheist scholar may go on to argue that said religion instills learned helplessness by causing its adherents to seek outside of themselves for said salvation.

But in the movie, the character acted in a way that proved he had faith in humanity, in the value of life. Not because of a god, but because he viewed life as sacred. As a result, he acted instead of waiting for God to do so. He decided life was sacred.

Sacredness is another word whose meaning can be blended. Is someone or something special because they are anointed by god? Or is sacredness a concept that we need to reconsider. Perhaps everything is sacred. Perhaps what’s missing from our culture, our nation and our planet, is a sense of universal sacredness.

Not because a scripture tells us so. But because we decide that it is so. Not this holy object or this ancient site. Not this chosen people. But everyone and everything. We can take back sacredness from its narrow usage just like we can with faith. Not because those usages are wrong, but because they are not universal.

Perhaps we unwittingly end up using our religions and our words and our laws to maintain classes of people. Citizens and illegals. Jews and Gentiles. Chosen ones and Philistines. Sacred land and brown sites. We pick and choose who and what is sacred by fiat or by doctrine. Even our religions are just for those who believe, who have faith. Others are not saved.

Even our sacred words are used to divide and thus conquer.

How does this happen? I don’t have the foggiest notion.

But I know there’s a name for it.

The mind virus—wetiko. The Spell. It settles upon our nation as we speak. Infiltrating our every thought. It divides. It feeds. It poisons us against one another. It is insatiable greed crossed with fear. It hates. It sees only enemies. It steals our words and inverts our nation’s principles and our world’s well-meaning religions.

I don’t know how to defeat it, but I think continually naming it is a start. We may never defeat the mind virus itself, but we might as well marshal our forces to defeat its avatar. That avatar has the keys to the soon-to-be kingdom on this 250th anniversary of the independence of our nation.

We must look around and see only sacredness. It is the antidote to the cynicism of abject greed and deception.

But we also must defeat those forces that would usurp and chain us all to a future of totalitarianism. That threat is all too real. They are trying to create a world where nothing is sacred.

All is raw material for creating more wealth for the few—grist for the mill.

Everyone is a means to that end.

Look in your hearts. Look to our institutions. But look at our words and see how even they can be used to subtly reinforce caste systems and dividing lines. We are balanced on a knife’s edge. Every choice matters.

Break the spell of wetiko by seeing everyone as not just a means to your ends, but an end in and of themselves. They are theirs just as you are yours.

This is the core of what it means to be civilized. To choose not to trespass, even when no one is watching. Even when you have been harmed. Even when you could easily rationalize it.