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| La Voie lactée / The Milky Way (Luis Buñuel, 1969) |
What happens if you've gone "Beyond the Pale?"
If your beliefs challenge the status quo, you can either take such thoughts underground, run away, forget about them, change your mind, or fight for your right to party on your own terms.
Most of these options result in conflict, and over the millennia (including this one), bloodshed.
The problem with both the status quo and Pied Pipers is: things change, and, as in Wisconsin, power can be flipped.
Fear will not save you, boldness will not save you, ignorance will not save you.
Better to keep on your toes and know too when to be very very still.
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| La Voie lactée / The Milky Way (Luis Buñuel, 1969) |
Above: Duel between a Jesuit and a Jansenist. Man on right: "It's a semi-Pelagian error to claim that Jesus died for all men!" The Other man: You're a madman! Divine Goodness! Christ died so that all men might achieve salvation!" (Duel with swords continues . . .)
Deviating too far from accepted social doctrine, dogma or practice can lead to banishment (anathema), excommunication, expulsion, exile, Crusades, Holy War, torture, burning, hanging, stabbing, beheading, death by proxy, or conversion. We have not "outgrown" such ways. In today's USA, for instance, the Tea Party operates like a fanatical religious sect, with its own set of beliefs, practices, sacred cows, saints, villains, and visions of Heaven and Hell. Stray too much from the accepted shibboleth (secret code word or phrase) and any member can become anathema, an apostate, a heretic. Better to fight infidels than your own cult members, but whatever's at hand will do, I suppose.
Today's Rune: Warrior.
1 comment:
Maybe a whiter shade of beyond the pale.
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