Spiritual Warfare by Jed McKenna

Author:Jed McKenna [McKenna, Jed]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2010-05-20T16:00:00+00:00

***

Bob wants to talk, but it's time to take Maya for a walk so I invite him to come along. My knee still needs help on these hilly excursions, so I grab a hiking staff and the ball-flinger and a water bottle and we head out.

Early in Orwell's 1984, protagonist Winston Smith is sitting in a cafeteria contemplating the various personality types around him. They're different, but what they have in common is that they're all managing to believe what is, to Winston, unbelievable. One manages to believe through sheer stupidity, another through zealotry, and a third, the most intelligent, through the mental complexities of doublethink.

And sitting in their midst is poor, hopelessly sane Winston, who knows that two plus two makes four, but who is surrounded by people who know with greater certainty that two plus two makes five. All of them living in a world where you get tortured and killed for believing—even in your most secret heart—that two plus two makes four. Believing the lie is absolutely necessary to their survival, and Winston's fatal flaw is that he can't do it.

Bob is a unique blend of all three types: stupid, as in protectively ignorant: zealous, as in the emotional reinforcement of ignorance: and intelligent, as in capable of the strenuous mental contortions necessary to believe the obviously untrue. That is the three-Legged stool of delusion, and Bob, like everyone. sirs squarely upon it.

Unlike everyone, however. Bob has declared himself an authority on truth and has written a book on the subject. Regardless of what comes from it, his hope when writing it was that it would be well received and that he would rise from the swollen ranks of students to the less puffy ranks of teachers: from sheep to shepherd, from common inmate to respected trustee.

We exit through the north gate and follow roads and trails up into the hills toward an old chapel. For the first ten minutes it's all uphill and not conducive to talk. Maya is off prowling around, sniffing every third rock. There are perils for a dog out here and I'm only semi-ready for an emergency, but she's a smart girl and hasn't come close to getting into trouble yet.

Once leveled off, we walk and talk for a few minutes, circling around the edges of tricky subjects. The problem with talking to Bob has been that we don't have a workable dynamic. If we were student-teacher, that would be fine because I could muscle him around a bit and he would know not to resist too much. As it is, he wants to think we're having a peer-to-peer dialogue, which leaves me in a bit of confusion as to what to say and why to say it.

The world is full of false and artificial authority. To my casual observation, true authority comes from knowledge and false authority comes from might. Badges and guns, titles and offices, money and rank, these are a few of the things that bestow upon people a power and privilege to which they have no independent claim.

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