Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Widespread Disrespect for Tyr

I've come to believe that we live in a culture that has a profound lack of respect for Tyr. First of all, it is incapable of distinguishing Tyr, a God, from a completely out-of-control jotunn force of rage and violence. It confuses Tyr and Fenris! Easy to do in a culture so shaped by Rome ; after all, Romulus, from whom Rome was named, was a son of Mars and fostered by a Wolf.

We are a strange culture, based on a widespread suppression of anger, and yet full of violence and rage. It's no wonder. Tyr is a civilizing force, in the best sense of the term. He makes anger into an art, an art of expression, of bringing conflict out into the open where it can be dealt with, and allowing anger to articulate where rights are being stepped on, even when the official "law" does not recognize such rights. Law as layers, as sedimentation in an ever-circulating well, is always evolving, and anger gives us the opportunity to reflect where things are not right, and to speak up about them. A society unwilling to listen to assertions of right is a society worth fighting.

Brutality is not of Tyr. Brutality is jotunn, through and through. And the world is full of it, because the world has not yet been completed. It requires our challenge. Yes, we deprive the world of good when we deprive it of our challenge!

Yet how often do we really encourage someone who is standing up, and how often do we say, sit down and shut up? We don't really admire deeds of daring anymore, deeds that come from the heart, deeds that come from inner initiative, deeds that do not ask permission, deeds that challenge the status quo, deeds that follow the inner sense of rights and refuse to have them stepped upon.

Can I go so far as to say that we have effectively exiled Tyr? Why not? Isn't war our greatest export business? In other words, anywhere but here? I'm not suggesting we bring "war" here. But "fight" at all is forbidden, and completely channelized into export, where it overwhelmingly serves manipulators who laugh at the heroes they are exploiting, and don't care at all what their fate is once they've won the fatcats whatever "strategic advantage" they needed for their profits. And it's easy for the impulses to get exported, because fights certainly have no advantage here. "Resistance is futile" is the message overwhelmingly broadcast here. The court-system no longer serves us and is infested with lawyers and bureaucrats who twist justice into a parody of itself. Where are Tyr's courts? Anywhere?

Are we listening to our anger? Our anger that says, something is wrong? Our anger that says, something needs to be righted? Our anger that says, if we don't do something about this, we will be taken over by jotunnish impulses which will degrade and destroy everything we find holy? Without righting wrongs, we will become rageful, violent, resentful, spastic, and cowardly. We will become brutal.

And never mistake brutality for anything that has to do with Tyr. Are you worshipping a God or a jotunn? It's a beautiful question.

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