For Heaven's Sake...

Let us admit that we citizens of the Western World in the Third Millennium have arrived at Universal Consensus on at least three topics: (1) We are all of us, and each one of us, responsible for our own Salvation, or degree of Enlightenment.  And (2) we are none of us obliged to believe what our leaders or Princes believe.  And (3), such is the dominance of Individualism and Humanism among us, that we cannot, and do not, tolerate the least interference with the dictates of individual conscience by any Established Power, Political or Religious.  And (thus 4) whatever "Salvation" or "Enlightenment" may mean, they are not to be sought in the State (or its governance), which is, by definition, for each of us, subsidiary and secondary to them.  ¿Çlaro? Well, I've been listening to Professor Peterson, and I think so.

And I agree with Dr. Peterson that the New Testament of Christian Bible represents an important advance, over both the Ethos of the Old Testament and the Commonly Accepted Ethos of the Ancient Roman Empire, in the concept of individual dignity.  Seriously, I cannot read Horace's matter-of-fact accounts of his relations with his slaves, nor Piny the Younger's dispassionate report to the emperor about torturing a Christian woman in order to elicit information about Christianity, without a sinking feeling in my stomach--and a part of my brain crying out, "Can't he see this is wrong?"  And this, my gut and conscient reaction, I acknowledge, must be part of my Christian, or at least my Protestant Heritage.  Nor, Buddhist aesthete that I admit--in the light of M. Baudelaire's penetrating essay--that I am, do I refuse to grant acknowledgement or gratitude for it.  M. Baudelaire does me disservice if he thinks (that I do) so.