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9
One result: from our best qualities come our worst. From our
urge to pull together comes our tendency to tear each other apart. From
our devotion to a higher good comes our propensity to the foulest
atrocities. From our commitment to ideals come our excuses to hate.
Since the beginning of history, we have been blinded by evil's ability to
don a selfless disguise. We have failed to see that our finest qualities are
often the generators of the actions we most abhor--murder, torture,
genocide and war.
For millennia men and women have looked at the ruins of their
lost homes, at the people precious to them whom they will never see
alive again, and they have asked that spears be turned to pruning hooks
and that mankind be granted the gift of peace. But prayers are not
enough. To dismantle the curse that mother nature has built into us we
need a new way of looking at man, a new way of reshaping our destiny
and undoing the secret pleasure we take in the shedding of blood.
We must build a picture of the human soul that works. Not a
romantic vision that nature will take us in her arms and save us from
ourselves, but a recognition that the enemy is within us, and that nature
has deposited it there. We need to stare directly into nature's bloody
face and realize that she has saddled us with evil for a reason. And we
must understand that reason to outwit her.
For Lucifer is almost everything men like Milton imagined him to
be. He is ambitious, an organizer, a force reaching out vigorously to
master even the stars of heaven. But he is not a demon separate from
nature's benevolence. He is a part of the creative force itself. Lucifer, in
fact, is mother nature's alter ego.
<< < GO > >>
9
9
One result: from our best qualities come our worst. From our
urge to pull together comes our tendency to tear each other apart. From
our devotion to a higher good comes our propensity to the foulest
atrocities. From our commitment to ideals come our excuses to hate.
Since the beginning of history, we have been blinded by evil's ability to
don a selfless disguise. We have failed to see that our finest qualities are
often the generators of the actions we most abhor--murder, torture,
genocide and war.
For millennia men and women have looked at the ruins of their
lost homes, at the people precious to them whom they will never see
alive again, and they have asked that spears be turned to pruning hooks
and that mankind be granted the gift of peace. But prayers are not
enough. To dismantle the curse that mother nature has built into us we
need a new way of looking at man, a new way of reshaping our destiny
and undoing the secret pleasure we take in the shedding of blood.
We must build a picture of the human soul that works. Not a
romantic vision that nature will take us in her arms and save us from
ourselves, but a recognition that the enemy is within us, and that nature
has deposited it there. We need to stare directly into nature's bloody
face and realize that she has saddled us with evil for a reason. And we
must understand that reason to outwit her.
For Lucifer is almost everything men like Milton imagined him to
be. He is ambitious, an organizer, a force reaching out vigorously to
master even the stars of heaven. But he is not a demon separate from
nature's benevolence. He is a part of the creative force itself. Lucifer, in
fact, is mother nature's alter ego.
<< < GO > >>