Enlightenment

On Batchelor’s website today there was a picture of Colleen R. LaRose, dibbed by the media as Philadelphia’s ‘Jihad Jane’, dressed in a black, tightly wrapped niqāb, showing only her eyes through a horizontal slit. It reminded me of a short story by Andre Malraux I just finished reading entitled, “The Tank Trap”. It talks about four men in a tank during WWII. The driver of the tank also saw the world only through a narrow slit. The aperture was designed for the crew’s protection but it was also severely limiting, revealing barely where they were going, not where they had been or what might be approaching from the sides.

Man’s highly touted perceptions in general can hardly be said to foster a state of enlightenment. On our best days we see only a narrow spectrum of light; we hear only a narrow band of sound – much less than a dog. We think in symbols arranged in linear form. In short, we are almost blind. It is the human condition itself that pronounces us ignorant as we stumble through the debris of fractured perception while, ironically, we often presume to hold ourselves on the same level as an all-knowing, all seeing God. It is a sign of supreme arrogance that has led so many of us to abandon the concept of ‘God’ altogether. As such we presume to control populations, the oceans, mortality and even the weather.

The truly enlightened man is humble. He is profoundly aware of his limitations. He does not abandon his humanity in favor of ridiculously play-acting God’s supposed role. All today’s troubles (and all the troubles that have ever been) are spawned by the striving for control which stems from a failure to recognize the remarkable fact that only the blind are forever condemned to rule.