The Ontological War

Several of my posts here have been critical of Catholics, and the main reason for that is that Catholics and the Vatican have pushed themselves to the front of those who are working to get all of us to become more alienated. But there are other organizations besides the RCC that are working to accomplish this, such as the Southern Baptist Convention.

I was reading the Baptist Press and came across an article, Christians & movies (part 1), by Christian movie reviewer Phil Boatwright. After reading a few paragraphs, the thought popped into my head: beneath everything else, this guy is saying, “Help! The World’s Too Big for Me! Make It Smaller!”

Boatwright doesn’t like profanity:

Clark Gable’s famous line in “Gone With The Wind” — “Frankly my dear, I don’t give a d***” — caused quite a stir back in 1939. How times have changed.

although I have to admit, I’ve watched movies where I’ve thought, “Nobody I know cusses anywhere near that much.”

Boatwright also doesn’t like using the Lord’s name in vain. But in a review of the movie Avatar, which has made more money than any other film, he writes “the film is anti-war, anti-military and anti-human. That’s too anti for me.” So, for those of us who are learning what a “Christian” is, it’s wrong to say the word “damn,” and it’s also wrong to be against war.

Turning for a moment to increasing realself people, it’s not uncommon for those who are in the early transition to say they feel imprisoned, trapped, or confined. Or they might say they feel as if the sky and all the ceilings of buildings are only 5-feet high, meaning that life has become painfully constricting to them. The world is too small for these people because they are starting to realize that the day-to-day world, which is now and has been a socialself world, does not permit them to be all their realselves in it.

But decreasing realself people, such as Boatwright, feel just the opposite: to them the world has actually expanded beyond what it should be and needs to be contracted. For these people, the world is too big, they can’t handle it, and they want to shrink it by making it, ourselves, our relationships, our lives, and even the future all smaller.

What’s bad about all of this is that the smaller world these people want to bring about is actually a more alienated world. “Modernity,” for instance, is rejected because it represents an actual or even a potential increase in degree of realself. To these alienated and fearful folks, the past–when we were even less our realselves than we are now–is where we all need to go.

The Ontological War is starting another series, Help! The World’s Too Big for Me! Make It Smaller! This series will explain what’s really going on with the seemingly tireless efforts by decreasing realself people to make human selfhood and human life even less than they are now.