Through what doors or gates in our minds and hearts can information and growth and novelty come?  Each of us to some extent is a fortress, armed to the teeth against what we view as hostile incursions.  No matter how tolerant we fancy ourselves there are some positions and worldviews (and these, of course, differ according to the individual), and even some aspects of reality, that we find beyond the pale and completely unacceptable.  These worldviews and approaches provoke harsh and immediate responses, like an automatic declaration of war, by hitting sensitive triggers that we do our best to shield.  Considering that we live in a prickly and overly sensitive world (and as a prickly and oversensitive person I don’t have a whole lot of room to talk about such matters myself), what sort of gates and open doors do we have in the first place?

Recently, while reading Alan Knight’s Spirit of the Antichrist [1], I was intrigued by his argument that the early Roman Catholic Church, despite sharing a lot of qualities with heathen faiths like the mysteries of Attis or the Chaldean Mysteries or the cult of Mithras, had a hostile and adversarial relationship and would never admit or consciously copy anything from these rival faiths.  And all of these faiths in particular were, despite (or maybe because of their position as similar Hellenistic rivals) very violently hostile to their competitors.  How then did they get to be so similar in the first place, if they were not willing to copy from each other?

The answer is that all of them sought to be seen as (and to see themselves as) the latest and greatest manifestation of the supposedly universal truths inside of Greek philosophy, which led them to read their own existing traditions (which for the Roman Catholic Church included the Bible) in light of that bogus Babylonian-inspired Greek philosophy, reading their traditions allegorically to express the supposedly latest and greatest progressive truth.  As all of these churches had the same aspirations, to be seen as intellectually respectable according to Greek philosophy and the cultural arbiters of their time who judged by that man-made standard, they all had the same open door to the world, and therefore ended up rather similar despite their hostility to each other.  Once a belief was put in the cauldron of Greek philosophy, be it theurgy or sun-worship or a belief in the immortal soul, it tended to get transferred to all of these heathen faiths because they were all copying the latest philosophical beliefs of the time.  As an aside, it is for this reason that the Roman Catholic Church, while it has never reconciled with the belief in democracy (as that is a direct assault upon its belief of its priesthood as the only intermediaries between God and heaven, hence God can never directly deal with or endorse the people without priestly oversight), has no problem accepting theistic evolution, because that is the latest and greatest(?) philosophical “truth” of the humanistic project popularized by the Greeks.

We might say, then, in light of that example, that our open doors to the outside world, the gates of our fortress walls, are our aspirations–how we wish to be seen by others.  A good fortress builder knows that is the weakest point of our defenses, as gates were necessary for food and people to flow in and out of a fortified territory but that need for some level of openness meant vulnerability to attack.  From ancient times engineers sought to provide some measure of openness and also provide for a strong defense as well.  Often this involved disguising the gate, making it possible to be closed by the defenders in case of an assault or a siege, or by lengthening the passageways in and making those who sought to enter vulnerable to assault from the defenders for prolonged periods of time.  All of these means sought to make a vulnerability of needing to be open in at least some areas less damaging.

And the same is true for us individually as people, as well as within our organizations.  Our aspirations and hopes, our longings to be liked and respected by certain people, our vanities, if you will, are our gates.  These are our vulnerabilities, because if these are threatened we feel as if we lack defenses at all, because they are the weak points in our defenses, the gaps in our walls, the places where people can really hurt us deep inside.  These gates are metaphorical, not literal as is the case with castles and walled cities, but they are no less real, and the suffering that results from having these defenses breached is no less real as well.  We need to be careful and keep an eye on our vanity so that we remember that it is through our insecurities that wrong ideas and mistaken beliefs come.

As someone who is both deeply musical and deeply interested in music, I have pondered this subject in light of what songs and artists and genres tend to move me the most.  Since I have been able to listen to music again for the past few days (now that I found my pair of headphones and have a computer that can listen to music online), I have been trying to listen to songs that I am not familiar with by the band Badfinger, a band I have written about on a couple of occasions [2] [3].  In thinking about their music and that of other bands I really like, I realize that there tends to be a similar sensitivity in them.  It is as if their songs are at the resonant frequency of my own emotional life, with both a depth of intuitive insight and deep (if sometimes restrained) feeling.

What I have found for myself is that this similarity of sensibility that I have with certain musicians and artists (a sensibility that makes such artists very vulnerable to depression and to drug and alcohol addictions) allows me to appreciate their work on a very deep level, but on a level that reminds me of my own gates and vulnerabilities.  The more gates one has, the more one can connect and understand the outside world, but at the same time the more vulnerable places one has to defend.  There are always tradeoffs in this fallen world.  Unlike with the Roman Catholic church, though, I do not feel as if musicians and artists and writers with the same sort of gates and aspirations as I have are rivals.  I rather appreciate their work all the more because they are so similar to me.  There is, after all, enough honor and enough success for many in this world, and even more in the next.  There is therefore no need to be hostile towards those who share a similar worldview.  There is rather encouragement that we should hope and endure and not despair, for life in a fortress can be rather lonely sometimes, as I well know.

[1] https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2011/11/03/book-review-spirit-of-antichrist/

[2] https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2011/01/13/power-pop-tragedies-and-the-search-for-obscure-music-history/

[3] https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2011/09/09/only-pieces-of-the-night/