The Purpose-Driven Tragedy

The mosaic is starting to become clearer. Pieces are falling into place, and certain themes are becoming pronounced. I want to start directly building off of pieces we have already laid in place. Let us first consider this excerpt from a few days ago:

We shape the love we desire, and then we demand it. And when we don't get it, when we can't find it, when we can't even buy it, we scream at the world, curse it for denying us what we believe we are justly owed. But never do we stop and see the whole picture. Never do we stop and see The Divine Comedy for what it is.

The truth is, love is not the only use case of this scenario. Any desire will do. And so I want to go into more detail about the nature of this. I want to add some more pieces to this part of the mosaic. But first let us also consider this, from the same entry as the previous excerpt:

[The enlightened mind] sees [people] try to conceal [their] pain, [their] fear, [their] want with a blinding egocentric mindset that allows them to honestly believe they are inherently owed the fulfillment of their desires. And it is out of this self-created debt that they try to demand love.

With these two pieces in mind, I will now start with the conclusion, and work backwards, pulling the idea apart. I begin with the end because it was a thought that hit me this morning like a thunderbolt. It was a one-line statement, but it brought into focus a large part of our mosaic: "The Divine Comedy is a self-imposed tragedy."

My previous entries had been building toward this statement, and finally my mind was able to make that jump. Now we shall go back and fill in the cracks.

The leap came from the initial idea of the "self-created debt" merged with the imagery of "scream[ing] at the world" to form a more powerful idea. A debt in and of itself does not account for the intensity of the effects of The Divine Comedy. We are talking about an epic struggle here. This is more than simple frustration—this is the ultimate battle humanity fights with itself. It is, by all means, a tragedy.

To proceed any further will require us to gather one piece of information: the definition of tragedy. A quick Google search and a link to Answers.com gives us the following:

A drama or literary work in which the main character is brought to ruin or suffers extreme sorrow, especially as a consequence of a tragic flaw, moral weakness, or inability to cope with unfavorable circumstances.

But we are not discussing a work of fiction; we are discussing the very nature of our lives. And so it is here that we continue working backwards, realizing that art has imitated life. Our creative endeavors are spawned from our actual experiences, and so this definition will work for our real-life introspection just fine.

To further validate this definition, let us look at one of the end results it states: an individual "[suffering] extreme sorrow". This is the very effect of The Divine Comedy that we have been investigating! The link is growing stronger, the mosaic more detailed! Now look at the causes, two to be specific: "a tragic flaw" and an "inability to cope with unfavorable circumstances". This is where we need to focus our thoughts.

The tragic flaw of humanity is actually its inability to cope with unfavorable circumstances. This inability stems from our strong attachment to desire. Desire is synonymous with being human. A person without desire is considered to be lacking something most crucial in our society. Desire is key, desire is central, desire is base. Because of our strong connection to desire, we are unable to give it up, to let it go, even when doing so would be beneficial to us. This inability to let go is what pins us in this position of not being able to cope with unfavorable circumstances. Rather than let go and be free, we cling and struggle and fight. And ultimately, it is a fight we are destined to lose. The universe is under no obligation to fulfill our desires. None. Egocentrism is what allows us to believe that it should. It causes us to believe a favorable event should occur, a particular person should love us, or our god of choice will take care of us and only us. The universe does not work this way, but we have blinded ourselves into believing it does.

And so what happens when the immovable object of our desire meets the unstoppable force of the universe? Pain. Immense, soul-wretching pain. It's a fight literally until death. Only in our final moments will we even consider letting go. And even then there are many who will cling until the bitter end. Death becomes the sweet release from pain, the pain to which we chained ourselves.

And it was from this that the salvationist religion was born. And why not? We know pain in this world, and that pain ends at death. And since we all desire to always exist, and we will not give up our desire, it's only natural that we come to believe in this wonderful, perfect place that exists after death. And since we are expecting nothing but pain in this life, why not use the time trying to ensure we make it to that happy place? And this is where life was given a purpose.

Now, the argument can be made here that salvationist religions tell us to strip away desire. But here's the problem: by giving life a purpose, we have given ourselves the desire to fulfill that purpose. By desire I have never meant sinful desire, but simply base want. Religious desire is the most dangerous desire of all because it creates the deepest kind of fear in people. Unfulfillment of a religious desire equates to the loss of one's soul. And when people are motivated by that ultimate fear, they will do anything in the fight for their beliefs, for their worldviews. Religion becomes the ultimate justification, and no one bothers to question it.

Now, I am not saying that religion is the root of humanity's problems. But it certainly is one of it's biggest issues. By creating a desire in people that they will never question or abandon, religion chains them to a life of pain. And what's worse is that religion further justifies this pain by essentially passing it off as character-building. Religion enslaves people to The Divine Comedy.

But religion is not our main focus, merely a prime example. The main focus is on the nature of our self-imposed tragedy. Ultimately, a tragedy is something that seemed unavoidable to the person involved, but to an outside viewer was preventable. If no one had any control over it, it would merely be unfortunate. We have the power to let go of our desires at any time. There is nothing that makes it impossible. Thus, our tragic flaw is realized not as the existence of our desire, but rather our complete unwillingness to let go of it.

As I bring this entry to a close, I would like to refer back to the definition of tragedy, particularly to the other effect that we did not discuss: how as a result of tragedy an individual would be "brought to ruin". Our desire will literally be the destruction of ourselves if we do not learn to let go. Our worlds will come crashing down around us, and we will fall to our knees, the rain pouring upon us, still no answer from the heavens.