Struggle in the Human Soul

Once again: I object to using the name of murderers in the news. We reward those who seek to go out in a blaze of ignominy by constantly repeating their names.

I just watched this video again. I think i've watched it a half dozen times. It brings tears to my eyes every repetition for its beauty: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fj6r3-sQr58

Compare the joy and ineffable artistry of these anonymous musicians to the horror and destruction of the assassin/murderer, whose name is not to be mentioned ever again. There's a cultural struggle between the ugliness in life and the beauty.

John Paul II called the U.S. a culture of death. Rather, I think we are in the throes of choosing. Clearly a dystopian/absurdist vision infuses much of liberal American culture. Whether it's "It's Always Sunny in Phila.," or Larry David, we laugh at unbridled rudeness, crassness, the coarse exploitation of the other. Perhaps we laugh at the inexplicable but ever present and terrifying forces that inhabit the human psyche, that cause us, in our self-centeredness, to destroy the very things we love. But releasing our inhumanity and laughing at it only allows it freedom, like gas that can no longer be contained in a sewer.

The video below is a true antidote to the horror within, because it elicits smiles, and loving, and gratuitous, unplanned acts of kindness that simply overflow with the joy.

I'll tell you one place the religious right has perhaps been correct in this country: they feared the forces liberated by absolute license and individuality. Perhaps the left liberated us for self-fulfillment, but they also freed the terror and inhumanity that lurks within the dark horror festering or roiling within the satanic portions of the soul. We have let them out, and now its time to repent and return to the allure and charm of a little girl putting a coin in a man's hat, and watching as pure beauty unfolds from within musicians who trained to bring exalting human aspirations into a community of people brought together by their common experience of the ineffable, and the humanity that ensued.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fj6r3-sQr58