TL:DR: The Genesis Question part fifty-five

Hi, Everybody!

So, two things:

1, the bizness:

Jeff Seiler is winning the Green Dante/Green Virgil Cover for $1300 (US)! If you want in on this action, just comment on this post, or e-mail momentofcerebus@gmail.com As Dave said, the auction ends on Friday at Midnight (CDT). To prevent douchebaggery, I'm limiting the bidding to WHOLE US Dollars, in FIVE DOLLAR INCREMENTS. So if you wanna make Seiler lose his faith in humanity, you gotta come up with at least thirteen hundred and FIVE bucks (You Ess.). After the deadline, I'll contact the winner and figure out how we're getting Dave his money. (Seiler suggested that the increase should be in FIFTY dollar increments, and as much as I wanna get Dave mo' money, I was trying to eliminate the one penny douches...)

The remastered Volume 1 is available digitally for $9.99.

If you got a couple of extra bucks and want to do a fellow Cerebus fan a solid, frequent commentator Mike Battaglia has a go fund me here.

Friend to the Blog, and the guy who sets his phasers to the Light Side: Steve Peters has another Kickstarter going. (I have a joke in one panel.)

2, I ran out of pages from issue 289/290 to run in front of Dave's Genesis Question commentaries. Dave suggested I use Jewish, Christian or Muslim religious images. But then, Superman's Frenemy: David Birdsong sent in a bunch of (so far) unused Cerebus in Hell? images and now I'ma gonna run them. So:
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image by Doré, Sim & Birdsong

15 February 15

Hi Troy and Mia!

Okay. Ecclesiastes 3:11.  This is really getting far afield from what I consider formal Scripture, but let's persevere.  For the sake of meeting Mr. Ross' thesis on its own terms, I'll start with the supposition that Ecclesiastes is scriptural, the word of God.

3:11 reads

He hath made everything beautiful in his time: also he hath set the world in their heart, so that no man can find out the work that God maketh from the beginning to the end.

In HIS time.  The fact that the "his" is lower case would suggest that it refers to the "everything" rather than to God.  Which would imply a strictly masculine nature to "everything". Not an uninteresting theory (if true): that the masculine "everything" was made by God and everything feminine or neuter wasn't actually made by God but, rather, occurred as implications of the masculine "everything".  I can't think of an analogous assertion in scripture.

If the lower case is a typographical error and does refer to God, it would seem an awkward construction to me:  Can an omnipresent being be said, accurately, to have a "time"?  ALL time is GOD's time, presumably.

"He hath set the world in their heart so that no man can find out the work that God maketh from the beginning to the end."  Again, not an uninteresting theory, if by "the world" we're technically talking about the YHWH.  There is, at least, an arguable internal logic to the verse, first drawing a distinction between the "everything beautiful" being masculine (compelling the inference that the feminine and the neuter came into existence by some other means than being "made" by God) and then suggesting that the feminine and the neuter -- as expressed by the incarnation of the YHWH -- are, by nature, impediments.  Not only external to God's creation, but designed to inhibit and prevent understanding of that creation. 

It also seems a strange -- and specific -- citation for Mr. Ross to use, suggesting as it does that "no man can find out the work that God maketh" when that's exactly what Mr. Ross is endeavouring to do:  to find out, identify and document what he sees as the irrefutable science behind Genesis. 

Of course this is also the chapter that begins with what became, slightly modified, in my boyhood, the lyrics to "Turn, Turn, Turn".  The Byrds?  I forget. I think it was The Byrds, though.  "To every thing [interpolated: there is] a season and a time to every purpose under the heaven."  Followed by a lengthy list of dichotomous "things".  "A time to [Hebrew: bear KJV: to be born…

[I'm making an exception here in citing the Hebrew AND KJV versions.  It seems to me a "bridge too far" to be commenting on non-scripture AND citing the KJV translators improvisations:  so for the rest of Ecclesiastes 3, I'll stick strictly to the original Hebrew terminology]

... and a time to die; a time to plant and a time to pluck up that which is planted".  Interesting dichotomies:  "kill/heal"; "break down/build up"; "weep/laugh"; "mourn/dance" (!); "cast away stones/gather stones together"; "embrace/be far from embracing"; "get (or seek)/lose"; "keep/cast away"; "rent/sow"; "keep silence/speak"; "love/hate"; "war/peace". 

A time to love and a time to hate?  It's hard for me to imagine any good time to "hate".   Even harder for me to see such an assertion as scriptural. 

"What profit hath he that worketh, in that wherein he laboureth?"

I think I understand the question (assuming it isn't purely rhetorical: hardly a safe assumption given the tone of the rest of the chapter).  I guess my answer would be that work itself provides the profit from that work.  It's always easy to slip into the (as I see it) self-deluding idea that we're working towards something in our worldly works.  Work itself tends to be "goal oriented" in the sense that we want to accomplish smaller tasks and larger tasks and still larger tasks and that eventually we will "Get There" and we have a vague or specific mental image of what "There" is or will be.  In my own, personal, experience there isn't really a "There" apart from getting something done.  In my case a 26-year, 6,000 page graphic novel.  My mental image, while I was producing it, was of something that would be celebrated and materially successful.  Which it is, but on a very, very, very small scale.  Having made something exactly as I thought it needed to be made, I've ended up with a very small audience with a work that is almost completely unknown and far more widely reviled than admired. 

But, it is what it is. 

In retrospect I think I can see more clearly what I was actually doing and that it was inevitable that it would end up the way it ended up.  And I can also see that its inherent value was AS hard work.  Period.  My intention for it -- at least judging by the eleven years since it was finished -- proved meaningless -- less than meaningless -- but the hard work I put into it proved, it seems to me, to be the sum total of its value.  Which is why I continue to work hard -- even harder than I did then -- because it seems to me that that's how you find favour in the sight of God:  by keeping strictly to worship of God and religious observance, being 100% or as close to 100% reliable as you can get, and in between worship of God and religious observance by working as hard as you can work at whatever you're working at. 

I could make a persuasive argument that there is greater value to different kinds of work -- that trying to document Comic Art Metaphysics as accurately as I can in excruciating visual detail is valuable work: valuable in the sight of God -- but I have also become aware that most perceptions attached to work amount to self-mythologizing:  magnifying potential importance in order to maintain motivation.  In my heart of hearts and my mind of minds, though, I'm fully aware that as long as I was -- and am -- putting in thirteen hours a day six days a week, I could probably be as fruitfully shovelling manure.  Perhaps even more so since the capacity for self-mythologizing is less possible in the latter instance, so the work becomes a purer form of itself. 

As with everything else, I think it comes down to innermost motivation.  Choosing work instead of sloth seems to me a good choice, both as a general life choice and as the best minute-to-minute, second-to-second decision.  Don't slack off.  Work.  And I see inherent value in that as a straight-line-cradle-to-the-grave policy. I hope I can maintain it, although my body does, at least, seem to be falling apart.

So, to me, "IN THAT wherein he laboureth" is the pertinent element of the question.  Work AS work has merit.  Work with the idea that it is getting you somewhere I think doesn't have merit and is, in fact, a vice.  Ultimately, everything that is work is physically incarnated and everything physically incarnated is ultimately dust. Dust to dust.  Ashes to ashes.

I have seen the travail which God hath given to the sons of men, to be exercised by it. 

Of course, there are two different interpretations of "travail" -- one is "work" and the other is "trouble" -- as there are two different interpretations of "exercised" -- one is "physical work-out" and the other is "self-troubling". 

Mr. Ross' selected verse follows with these observations following it:

I know that no good in them, but for to rejoice, and to do good in his life.  And also that every man should eat and drink and enjoy the good of all his labour:  it  the gift of God. 

I agree that a man needs to do good in his life, as best he can conceive of that in terms of being charitable and agreeable and helpful, personally.  "Rejoice", I have a certain amount of trouble with.  Isn't it better that I use any time that I might allocate for "rejoicing" for doing more work and doing more good?  I'm not a great one for "victory laps".  Sometimes I think I've gotten pretty close to Right in what I'm doing but I think it's a safe assumption that I'm probably wrong and that I'm only going to make my situation worse by celebrating being "Right" instead of just ploughing right back into doing everything wrong but with right intent. 

Eat and drink? At a minimum for sustenance.  I can see that but not much beyond that.  "Enjoy" is just not in my nature.  Satisfying moments delivered by God.  I'm deeply appreciative of those because they're always unexpected and I always assume that each one is the last one I'm getting.  It seems a much healthier way to live:  I'm basically shovelling manure from now until I fall over and die so that's really all I'm anticipating.  Something happens every few weeks or every few months that isn't that? Well, hey, Bonus!  And then, immediately, back to shovelling manure.

I know that whatsoever God doeth, it shall be forever: nothing can be put to it, nor anything taken from it: and God doth it, that men should fear before Him.

I think only God could definitively make those statements.  From a man, they're just interesting opinions. 

That which hath been, is now: and that which is to be, hath already been, and  God requireth that which is driven away

The first half of the verse, in light of our modern scientific understanding of the fourth dimension, time, seems more like the kind of citation that Mr. Ross should be looking for.  I find it, personally, critically important to be aware that everything that will happen has already happened in a fourth-dimensional sense. My life of shovelling manure non-stop between here and the grave has already taken place.  Either I managed to do that, or I didn't.  MY job, as I see it, is to cleave as strictly as possible to my intended path: to make it match my intention and not to slack off or backslide or allow myself to be corrupted.  "God requireth that which is driven away".  I think that presents the problem for men (and women) of being careful of what they drive away.  Not throwing out the baby with the bathwater requires being able to discern which is which:  what in your life is the baby and what in your life is the bathwater.  No easy task, I don't think.

And moreover, I saw under the sun the place of judgement, wickedness  there; and the place of righteousness, iniquity there. 

If the author of Ecclesiastes is a prophet then I assume that we could take these as scriptural gospel.  If not, a great deal would depend on who the author is, what he saw, the circumstances under which he saw it and whether he has drawn the correct inferences.  In Ezekiel or John's Apocalypse, there is usually an angel or other incarnated being who says, "Behold, under the sun, the place of judgement, wickedness there and the place of righteousness, iniquity there."  Ezekiel and John both infer, as well, personally, elsewhere in their books, but you can usually tell human inference from Revelation in that way:  if its infallible doctrine, an angel will be the one who imparts it or it will be directly attributed to God.

This, to me, reads as pure human inference:

I said in my heart, God shall judge the righteous and the wicked: for a time there, for every purpose and for every work.  I said in my heart, concerning the estate of the sons of men that they might clear God and see that they themselves are beasts. For that which befalleth the sons of men, befalleth beasts, even one thing befalleth them: as the one dieth, so dieth the other: yea, they have all one breath, so that a man hath no prominence above a beast; for all is vanity.  All go unto one place, all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again.

I definitely try not to get above my place -- as I understand it these days -- but even in my own severely limited self-perception I have to say that I've never yet seen any beast shovel manure.  I think that animals basically "enact" with very little in the way of free will.  Yes, like beasts, we die, but while we're alive we have a much wider spectrum of free will choices to pick from, assessments that we need to make, choices we need to choose or not choose and consequences we have to live with.  To me, that separates us, dramatically, from the beasts.  The odds are probably pretty good that "all is vanity" -- that is, all is "in vain" -- but that's up to us.  At the end of the day, none of us will be able to say that we didn't have choices and that we didn't make those choices ourselves.  If you consciously choose vanity and vanities then you won't have much to complain of when you are made to suffer the consequences of that.  "You knew that that thing that you worked to be able to buy was dust, so why didn't you put your time and energies elsewhere? Why actively choose vanity when there's a wide spectrum of non-vain choices? Or, at least, choices that you yourself deem to be non-vain or less vain?" 

We do all return to the dust, but only physically.  There's something there, in man and in beast, a light that goes out at the point of death.  And then we can see only what that man or that beast WASN'T: the inert, "physically left-over" mass.  If that was what they were, they would still be it.

Who knoweth the spirit of the sons of man that is ascending, and the spirit of the beast that goeth downward to the earth?  Wherefore I perceive that there is nothing better, than that a man should rejoice in his own works: for that is his portion; for who shall bring him to see what shall be after him?

Ecclesiastes is traditionally attributed to Solomon and this certainly reads like a rationale for creating an ostentatious abattoir of a temple with your name on it.  

My question would be:  how do YOU know that the spirit of the sons of man IS ascending OR that the spirit of the beast "goeth downward to the earth"?  In answer to the question: Who shall bring him to see what shall be after him?, as a monotheist, I think John's Apocalypse is the definitive answer to that question.  This is what the End Times of this epoch are going to be like.  I, as a man, have a very limited ability to understand what is being described there, but it does, for me, keep everything in perspective.  All I can do is what I think is right and not do what I think is wrong in the hopes that my life and my spirit and all of my actions find themselves on the right side of the ledger:  not in support of the Beast or Satan or the Harlot but in support of God.

That, I see as my job, my works. 

Next week, God willing:  Habakkuk 3:3!

Best,

Dave

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Next Time: Girls! Girls! Girls!-Past Matt