Running With Stray Pups

a Revelation from the protests in Venezuela.

One of the most oddly aesthetically pleasing things about revolutions is the ability of massive crowds to come up with drum beats, like the scenes of the affectionately named Ukrainian "clankers" marching straight into APCs and snipers whilst pounding on their shields in unison. Their distinctive drumbeat brings to the mind that remembers these things visions of nobility and courage in the face of murder. This drumbeat which rouses the passions and became notorious online can be heard in this video. Perhaps these striking sounds and images are an appeal to the modern sensibilities and ideas Hollywood has seared into our psyches through things like the opening scene of In the Name of the Father but I believe that there is something deeply mythological about these events that strike the psyche at the core of what it means to be human, and thus our relationship to God. I think it’s apt to call the natural human tendency to participate in revolutionary actions and enjoy them "the pounding heart of liberty", whether that liberty is real or merely perceived and delusional, the humanistic cries of man to desperately escape the chains that bind(Romans 6, 8:19-22) are somehow endearing especially when one realizes the consequences for these men. (though for the wise Christian these cries appear as the cries of hell itself) The minds of both men and women alike seem to be held captive by manifesting the potential realism of fantasies like the battle of Thermopylae as imagined in the 300.

Though the Ukrainian videos of the Euromaidan are mostly lost to the internet or scrubbed, the interviews on the ground resonate to the heart of every man who sees them. As one hears these shop keeps, valets, and seamstresses speak about losing their friends and neighbors as they valiantly(though in the meta-scheme, vainly) walk through sniper emplacements and walls of police. I think this speaks to the greater cultural attraction of all revolutionaries or proponents of 'radical' ideas, whether left or right wing, to the philosophical anchor of romanticism and ultimately communism, which while seemingly contradictory are capable of being held simultaneously in the post-modern and meta-modern zeitgeist, the alluring appeal of the individualistic human and their emotions as they serve the whole, in a proletariat one-ness with the aims of hierarchical overthrow for the values of equity and commodity(the same MO appearing even when explicitly anti-communist, the difference being the transitory and fluid definition of equity so called) or whatever exported ideology and words have been imported into the specific mob via the international, the only exception to this being reactionaries who pluck upon established national or ethnic mythos(which often can be fictionalized, and created for the aims of the movement, or are imported from other likeminded movements past and present and thus merely mythos) rather than the usual communist drive for a new mythos, because reactionaries call upon things both historically (usually pop-history, or perhaps recently lived history) and maintain the desire to create a new mythos, however their operations are fundamentally no different from that of the communist stated above, hence the concept of national socialism. This usage of words and mythos amounts to nothing more than a spell binding the minds of those who hear it.

We are in effect permanently consumed by a thoroughly socialist and post modern world, which in it's own recontextualizations of reality, as rejection of reality, has created a deliberate and unthinkable danger to those young and uneducated who are completely disconnected from the concepts and reality of their forbearers spanning back to the times of the ancients, and through ill-informed passion have even more dangerously fallen for the new meta-mythos which at it's core is designed to spit on that which is truer than mythos, the aletheia apokalypsis (ἀλήθεια ἀποκάλυψις) of the Logos which is ultimately and plainly revealed in the Gospel and in the divine revelations of the scriptures. The idea of deconstruction and recontextualization that comes with building a new mythos originates in the last ~350 years of philosophy from philosophers who specifically make it clear that their intent is to remove God’s objectivity and truth from society by means of elevating their own reason to the position of arbiter of objectivity and truth.

It is for this reason that these romantic feelings in the modern context are, in truth, most often shameful to have, even though we don't always feel them to be shameful because the heart loves these things. This philosophy of epistemology, existentialism and politics, are not just a fundamental rejection of core reality and truth by the deeds of individuals but more importantly by their intent and grand systems. It is for such reasons that the Law, the Wisdom literature and the Gospel tell us not to run with a mob, for though a cause may be impassioned with a spirit(which does not mean righteous or justified) or perhaps even if a mob is justified, such things are naturally disordered and prey upon humanist emotionalism that feeds evil systems and their mythos in opposition to the Logos. For young men in modern times it is important to know that you yourself are not literally in Venezuela fighting the regime and that your situation is not theirs. No, you are not literally him. God is just and knows all these things, about the individual, including you and the evils of the world. Wield your faith in Him dear Christian and resist the many evils of the self and of the world in accordance with the truth and Word, not in accordance with unwittingly manipulated passion nor mythos. Amen. ⳨