Massive Pissed Love by Richard Hell

Author:Richard Hell
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781619026742
Publisher: Soft Skull Press
Published: 2015-09-21T04:00:00+00:00

MOUTH OF HELL COLUMN: Spirituality Issue

THE ONLY INTERESTING THING about “spirituality” is what it means about how people behave with each other, and the foremost principle in that department would have to be the ever useful, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Of course a lot of battered children follow from that principle, but what can you do? Life is complicated. Me, I hate God. Actually, I’m the only person I know who refers much to “God.” I like to think about “God” the way other people like to think about what they’re having for dinner, or how they might improve their career path, or whatever. The God I hate is the God of religions. I don’t really believe in the concept of evil (it’s a religious concept), but if I were to call anything evil it would be “God.” (That being the God of monotheism—Judaism, Christianity, Islam . . . The old time gods of the “pagans,” such as in Greek mythology, for instance, were a lot more healthy, but that’s not my subject . . .) When I talk about God (my God as opposed to the God of religions), it’s just a way of referring to “the big picture.” It’s interesting to consider what the big picture looks like, and what one’s place in it might be. They do say, “God is in the details,” and I can’t argue with that, but what that means is it doesn’t pay to make generalizations or wave around absolutes: if you want to find God, you’d best pay attention to the local mechanics of things. It’s the same idea as all politics being local (it doesn’t matter how much you care about “human rights” if you oppress your family). The only talk that matters is talk that refers to the real, the concrete, what’s actually at hand. By saying God is “the big picture” I mean “the way things are.” That’s God: it’s all the laws, the past and the present, what made you, and where you’ll go when you die. That doesn’t mean “God is good.” God doesn’t give a shit. God is just what is happening, and what’s more interesting or important than that? By definition, it’s bigger than oneself, and so is impossible to ever really know. One can only hope, and do one’s best to assure (as God has willed), that one’s brain is consistent with it. But then since one’s brain has been created by it, presumably the two are somewhat similar. And, by the same token, so is every other brain (similar to God), so better give them respect . . . You can see where this is going. In circles. Multiplied. But isn’t that the shape of the universe? “God is an intelligible sphere whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere.” There you go. And what does that God command? Absolutely everything. The Infinite Commandments have you in their sway.

Monthly column for Noel Black’s Colorado Springs,

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