EXCERPT FROM THE UNQUIET GRAVE BY CYRIL CONNELLY

When I contemplate the accumulation of guilt and remorse which, like a garbage-can, I carry through life, and which is fed not only by the lightest action but by the most harmless pleasure, I feel Man to be of all living things the most biologically incompetent and ill-organized. Why has he acquired a seventy-year lifespan only to poison it incurably by the mere being of himself? Why has he thrown Conscience, like a dead rat, to putrefy in the well?

It is no answer to say that we are meant to rid ourselves of the self: religions like Christianity and Buddhism are desperate strategems of failure, the failure of men to be men. As escapes from the problem, as flights from guilt, they may be welcome, but they cannot turn out to be the revelation of our destiny. What should we think of dogs’ monasteries, hermit cats, vegetarian tigers? Of birds who tore off their wings and bulls weeping with remorse? Sure it is in our nature to realize ourselves, yet there remains the deadly flaw by which we feel most guilty when we are most confidently human and are most to be pitied when most successful.

Is this because Christianity is true? Or is it an ungrained effect of propaganda for the underdog? When did the ego begin to stink? Those of us who were brought up as Christians and have lost our faith have retained the sense of sin without the saving belief in redemption. This poisons our thought and so paralyzes us in action.
Communism is the new religion which denies original sin, though seldom do we meet a real Communist who seems either complete or happy. And yet Original Sin, what rubbish! The Expulsion from Eden is an act of vindictive spite; the Fall of Man, as recounted in the Bible, comes nearer to the Fall of God.

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David Patton and The Clown, thanks, both of you, for the feedback. It means a lot to me that you're enjoying the things I'm posting.