ow all tends toward death—that is the first immutable law. What we call life is actually quite unpleasant—a constantly changing environment, and we all having to adapt to it. The universe prefers the much more elegant state of stability—everything staying as it is. Beautiful death—Platonic.
But, of course, there are more ways to die than one. It is even possible to die while still living, medically speaking. And this is the inevitable end of progress. Consider, for a moment, the best possible material future. Perhaps we really do cultivate a friendly, leashed, god. What then? With all material problems solved, what do we turn our attention to? No doubt, most will immediately act upon their most depraved fantasies. All vice will be unleashed at a scale the Marquis de Sade would blush at. But all too soon, in the new horizon of eternity, they will realize even the most heinous of acts conceivable by mortal man to be pedestrian. They will turn to new dark counsels, become explorers in the furthest depths of sensory experience. And none of it will be enough. There will be a frantic, orgiastic search for new heights of pleasure, until the undeniable conclusion is reached: pure stimulation of the brain’s reward center. Than this, no human can go further—reduced to a disconnected jungle of synapses masturbating into eternity—the universe a gay suicide. No thought can exist here, no new stimulus, and there is scarcely any hope for anyone who could somehow be removed from that state.
Truly, beyond any heaven, this is a hell. And it is a hell of our own design and desire. This is what must happen if we are left to our own devices. Will God look down on Babel and smile, or turn his face?
There is another path, though one not of man. Man and matter cannot bear such reality alone. This path is the dark path—the path of privation and purification. Privation, because it removes by steps the sensual pleasure our soul so desires; purification, because it brings out the good such desires point to—and isolates and magnifies that good. This teaches us the riddle of Solomon, that all is vanity, and yet all is a great gift—that nature is by itself doomed, and yet worth redeeming. Reality is a world of symbols, and those who mistake the sign for what it signifies will wallow in autoreferential apathy. Only by apprehending the referent can nature be redeemed. But it is too bright and wonderful that it blinds our naive eyes. We must train to drink the true light. But as, when stepping inside from a sunny afternoon, all is dark, so the world of sense will be darkened to those trained on celestial light.
This is a wonderful new world, but one we cannot as yet taste. As the senses are how we apprehend the world, so when our sensual vision is darkened, even our sense of that divine light is. Our spiritual soul is nourished, and grows stronger, but not in a way we can now outwardly see. This quiets the soul, and it takes refuge in its Maker. For truly, when all things are revealed, the heaven of God will be uncountably many times more lovelier than the hell we mistake for utopia. Man as an animal has certain sensual limits—and if he deigns to reduce himself to mere animal and so dull his spirit’s ability to apprehend the world, he seals himself unto the true death beyond time. But the divine knows no such limits. Indeed, our very concepts of “progress” and “better” shatter in the face of absolute goodness. Truly God could make each day new and better for all eternity, but in Him lies true living contentment that needs no change, yet loves and encourages it. The concept of time ceases to have meaning in His kingdom. Unlike those wretched souls in our imagined utopia, who slowly unravel themselves as they transgress boundary upon boundary in the name of pleasure, who finally become less than nothing, cocooned in meaningless bliss, no longer remembering their name nor having anything one could call an identity, those who pass through the dark refining fire become more themselves, and are more wholly satisfied, each new joy increasing, not overshadowing, all the others.
You can never go to these places—not as you are now. This is only a parable, words at play showing how even the best possible futures left to man’s hands are indistinguishable from hell—and that the only hope man has lies in rejecting all natural wisdom, and embracing paradox.
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