The Sea Was Angry That Day, My Friends…When George Costanza, self-proclaimed marine biologist, describes his pulling Kramer’s golf ball from the blowhole of a beached whale in an episode of Seinfeld, he says, “The sea was angry that day, my friends, like an old man trying to return soup in a deli….” Well the angry sea seems again to have cast people about as it did to throw George atop the whale. But this time it was on stage, where it enveloped the lead singer of Jane’s Addiction in its anger. Frontman Perry Farrell punched guitarist Dave Navarro during an on-stage outburst during a performance of “Ocean Size.” *
Anger. It’s enveloping us like an angry sea. By the way, the lyrics of that song include
“I've seen the ocean
break on the shore
come together with no harm done…
Not so. Harm done. The concert ended as people dragged Farrell off stage. A sign of our times? Anger is often entwined with evil. Today, we’re standing and swimming in an ocean of anger. And as for those lyrics? Waves that break upon the shore appear to come together again with no harm done, but every crashing wave moves beach materials, changing the beach.
Hangry Man
Nothing is too trivial to spark anger in public, anger with tragic consequences. In North Carolina, a customer fatally shot a teenage worker because his Waffle House order was taking too long. ** Today, Ryan Routh of North Carolina is in court for trying to assassinate Donald Trump on a golf course.
What’s going on? Is there something in the air or water of North Carolina that is driving anger and violence? Is there something going on on planet Earth?
There have always been angry people. Many have been able to control themselves or to keep their anger private. But now anger is out in the open and as wide and as deep as the sea. On stage? Yep. In front of fans. At a chain restaurant. Yep, too. Even on airplanes.
Living in a B Horror Movie
Did you ever see the 1985 film Lifeforce? Quick summary: A returning comet spreads madness among us earthlings. Madness? I should say lethal anger, uncontrolled rioting anger.
It seems we’re all subject to such a force nowadays, subject to a worldwide angry spirit spewing hate everywhere, infusing the peaceful with violent tendencies. And it’s insidious. Like water, it penetrates every refuge through the smallest openings.
Forewarned Is Forearmed
In these post-Freudian times we can easily argue that anger is the inner brain’s self expression. From the seat of emotions bad emotions arise. Were these pre-Freudian times, we might argue that anger comes from without as evil forces like that unleashed by the comet in the movie or by the Satan in the Bible pervade human psyches.
Seeking the source of anger and evil has long been an obsession. Think Zoroastrianism with its explanation that evil exists during the reign of a god of evil (darkness, in Star Wars, the “Dark Side”) who takes a turn with a god of good. Depending on which one is active, the world is filled with evil or good.
No, I’m not a follower of Zarathustra, as I would argue with Augustine of Hippo (St. Augustine) that existence can’t support two infinite, eternal deities one light and the other dark. One infinite deity is all that existence can logically have; there’s no room for two in a spiritual analog of the physical Pauli Exclusion Principle. But if evil comes from “without,” then…
Surely, there must be some influence from outside the inner brain, maybe as in the Book of Job, from the Adversary (aka the Satan) to whom God granted permission to wreak havoc on Job and his family.
Back to that age-old question: Why does God allow evil to exist? Why does he allow angry people to hurt others? Why did He give permission to the Satan or to his emissary outside a Waffle House or on the golf course?
Look no further than that Book of Job for an explanation. God gives in Chapter 38 his answer to that question in a Kamala Harris word salad, a word salad for the ages.
When It Comes to Explaining Evil, God Speaks like Kamala Harris
God: So, you want to know the source of evil.
Job: Please, Lord, tell me.
God: Where were you when I laid the foundations of the Earth? I will question you,
and you shall answer me.
Then God goes through a list of all he has made and done, asking Job if he can explain it all:
Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation?
Tell me, if you understand.
Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know!
Who stretched a measuring line across it?
On what were its footings set,
or who laid its cornerstone--
while the morning stars sang together
and all the angels shouted for joy?
Who shut up the sea behind doors
when it burst forth from the womb,
when I made the clouds its garment
and wrapped it in thick darkness,
when I fixed limits for it
and set its doors and bars in place,
when I said, ‘This far you may come and no farther;
here is where your proud waves halt’?
“Have you ever given orders to the morning,
or shown the dawn its place,
that it might take the earth by the edges
and shake the wicked out of it?
The earth takes shape like clay under a seal;
its features stand out like those of a garment.
The wicked are denied their light,
and their upraised arm is broken.
Have you journeyed to the springs of the sea
or walked in the recesses of the deep?
Have the gates of death been shown to you?
Have you seen the gates of the deepest darkness?
Have you comprehended the vast expanses of the earth?
Tell me, if you know all this.
Not a very definitive explanation for evil’s presence among us, is it? It’s very much a precursor to a Kamala Harris word salad. Lots of talk, no satisfying answer. We know as much at the end as we knew at the beginning--nothing.
Basically, God tells Job, “You humans are too limited to know the answers. But, hey, blame me if you want. I made you with those limitations. Evil is here, and you’ll never understand why. Bad things happen because bad things happen. Live with it.”
Will We Ever Understand Why the Sea Is Angry?
Throughout the human population, there are those who can’t control themselves, who impetuously punch or shoot without compunction to harm or destroy lives of the innocent—Biblical Jobs whose lives mean nothing to them. And then there are the evil planners, people like Putin who does the methodical work of the Adversary to wreak havoc on whole populations of innocent and moral Jobs. There was a boundary. It was called Ukraine’s border. Putin initiated a period of now two years’ duration of death and evil. Ukrainian AND Russian Jobs have suffered, hundreds of thousands of them, families in Russia and families in Ukraine. And now he threatens a wider war, one that would surely bring total destruction to his homeland in any nuclear holocaust. From whence does such madness derive?
Autochthonous or Allochthonous Sources of Evil?
If the source of evil is inside us, maybe we’ll eventually reduce its occurrence to the product of biochemistry, and we’ll eliminate it with a happy pill, a peace drug. If it comes from an outside entity like the comet in Lifeforce or a Russian in a tank from outside Ukraine, then pills won’t work; and only behavioral training will protect us. But how do we defend against such evil? Do we merely sit on the dungheap of destruction like Job and say “Woe is me,” or do we stave off evil with evil, with, for example, our own tank?
Should Waffle House provide its employees with guns? Should rock band members wear protective gear on stage?
Maybe, but insidious hate and its companions anger and violence are in the cyberspace and radio airwaves around us, enveloping us like an angry sea.
*https://nypost.com/2024/09/15/entertainment/janes-addiction-apologizes-cancels-next-gig-after-singer-perry-farrells-onstage-fight-with-guitarist-dave-navarro/
**https://nypost.com/2024/09/15/us-news/nc-waffle-house-employee-shot-dead-by-disgruntled-customer/
Anger. It’s enveloping us like an angry sea. By the way, the lyrics of that song include
“I've seen the ocean
break on the shore
come together with no harm done…
Not so. Harm done. The concert ended as people dragged Farrell off stage. A sign of our times? Anger is often entwined with evil. Today, we’re standing and swimming in an ocean of anger. And as for those lyrics? Waves that break upon the shore appear to come together again with no harm done, but every crashing wave moves beach materials, changing the beach.
Hangry Man
Nothing is too trivial to spark anger in public, anger with tragic consequences. In North Carolina, a customer fatally shot a teenage worker because his Waffle House order was taking too long. ** Today, Ryan Routh of North Carolina is in court for trying to assassinate Donald Trump on a golf course.
What’s going on? Is there something in the air or water of North Carolina that is driving anger and violence? Is there something going on on planet Earth?
There have always been angry people. Many have been able to control themselves or to keep their anger private. But now anger is out in the open and as wide and as deep as the sea. On stage? Yep. In front of fans. At a chain restaurant. Yep, too. Even on airplanes.
Living in a B Horror Movie
Did you ever see the 1985 film Lifeforce? Quick summary: A returning comet spreads madness among us earthlings. Madness? I should say lethal anger, uncontrolled rioting anger.
It seems we’re all subject to such a force nowadays, subject to a worldwide angry spirit spewing hate everywhere, infusing the peaceful with violent tendencies. And it’s insidious. Like water, it penetrates every refuge through the smallest openings.
Forewarned Is Forearmed
In these post-Freudian times we can easily argue that anger is the inner brain’s self expression. From the seat of emotions bad emotions arise. Were these pre-Freudian times, we might argue that anger comes from without as evil forces like that unleashed by the comet in the movie or by the Satan in the Bible pervade human psyches.
Seeking the source of anger and evil has long been an obsession. Think Zoroastrianism with its explanation that evil exists during the reign of a god of evil (darkness, in Star Wars, the “Dark Side”) who takes a turn with a god of good. Depending on which one is active, the world is filled with evil or good.
No, I’m not a follower of Zarathustra, as I would argue with Augustine of Hippo (St. Augustine) that existence can’t support two infinite, eternal deities one light and the other dark. One infinite deity is all that existence can logically have; there’s no room for two in a spiritual analog of the physical Pauli Exclusion Principle. But if evil comes from “without,” then…
Surely, there must be some influence from outside the inner brain, maybe as in the Book of Job, from the Adversary (aka the Satan) to whom God granted permission to wreak havoc on Job and his family.
Back to that age-old question: Why does God allow evil to exist? Why does he allow angry people to hurt others? Why did He give permission to the Satan or to his emissary outside a Waffle House or on the golf course?
Look no further than that Book of Job for an explanation. God gives in Chapter 38 his answer to that question in a Kamala Harris word salad, a word salad for the ages.
When It Comes to Explaining Evil, God Speaks like Kamala Harris
God: So, you want to know the source of evil.
Job: Please, Lord, tell me.
God: Where were you when I laid the foundations of the Earth? I will question you,
and you shall answer me.
Then God goes through a list of all he has made and done, asking Job if he can explain it all:
Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation?
Tell me, if you understand.
Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know!
Who stretched a measuring line across it?
On what were its footings set,
or who laid its cornerstone--
while the morning stars sang together
and all the angels shouted for joy?
Who shut up the sea behind doors
when it burst forth from the womb,
when I made the clouds its garment
and wrapped it in thick darkness,
when I fixed limits for it
and set its doors and bars in place,
when I said, ‘This far you may come and no farther;
here is where your proud waves halt’?
“Have you ever given orders to the morning,
or shown the dawn its place,
that it might take the earth by the edges
and shake the wicked out of it?
The earth takes shape like clay under a seal;
its features stand out like those of a garment.
The wicked are denied their light,
and their upraised arm is broken.
Have you journeyed to the springs of the sea
or walked in the recesses of the deep?
Have the gates of death been shown to you?
Have you seen the gates of the deepest darkness?
Have you comprehended the vast expanses of the earth?
Tell me, if you know all this.
Not a very definitive explanation for evil’s presence among us, is it? It’s very much a precursor to a Kamala Harris word salad. Lots of talk, no satisfying answer. We know as much at the end as we knew at the beginning--nothing.
Basically, God tells Job, “You humans are too limited to know the answers. But, hey, blame me if you want. I made you with those limitations. Evil is here, and you’ll never understand why. Bad things happen because bad things happen. Live with it.”
Will We Ever Understand Why the Sea Is Angry?
Throughout the human population, there are those who can’t control themselves, who impetuously punch or shoot without compunction to harm or destroy lives of the innocent—Biblical Jobs whose lives mean nothing to them. And then there are the evil planners, people like Putin who does the methodical work of the Adversary to wreak havoc on whole populations of innocent and moral Jobs. There was a boundary. It was called Ukraine’s border. Putin initiated a period of now two years’ duration of death and evil. Ukrainian AND Russian Jobs have suffered, hundreds of thousands of them, families in Russia and families in Ukraine. And now he threatens a wider war, one that would surely bring total destruction to his homeland in any nuclear holocaust. From whence does such madness derive?
Autochthonous or Allochthonous Sources of Evil?
If the source of evil is inside us, maybe we’ll eventually reduce its occurrence to the product of biochemistry, and we’ll eliminate it with a happy pill, a peace drug. If it comes from an outside entity like the comet in Lifeforce or a Russian in a tank from outside Ukraine, then pills won’t work; and only behavioral training will protect us. But how do we defend against such evil? Do we merely sit on the dungheap of destruction like Job and say “Woe is me,” or do we stave off evil with evil, with, for example, our own tank?
Should Waffle House provide its employees with guns? Should rock band members wear protective gear on stage?
Maybe, but insidious hate and its companions anger and violence are in the cyberspace and radio airwaves around us, enveloping us like an angry sea.
*https://nypost.com/2024/09/15/entertainment/janes-addiction-apologizes-cancels-next-gig-after-singer-perry-farrells-onstage-fight-with-guitarist-dave-navarro/
**https://nypost.com/2024/09/15/us-news/nc-waffle-house-employee-shot-dead-by-disgruntled-customer/
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