Wednesday, August 04, 2004

History Is Our Posterity

Immortality is a dangerous lure, fishing everything that craves it. The impossibility of living forever means that we have to try to sketch ourselves into the fragile fiber of humanity.

Masking plastic surgery can extend a youthful appearance, proper health care can lengthen our mortality. But neither will save us from aging or death.

Jesus Christ and Pontius Pilate are inextricably immortal, if Pontius had decided to free Jesus Christ we would have little cause to remember the world’s most renown condemnation. Banished would be the mind-bending drama of the crucifixion and the miraculously unforgettable resurrection. Christ, planted in our hearts by our guilt-stricken humanity, ever in need of forgiveness. If we had been the mighty Roman governor, crucifying the son of god would have been a tempting election. The opportunity to crucify the holy son of a divine trilogy instantly immortalizes. There is only one Pontius Pilate, there will never be another!

There is something remarkably immortal in being able, as a mortal, to destroy something that is held to be eternal and divine.

Hitler is etched in history because of his atrocities, his inability to judge enough hate as enough. Napoleon too, etched into the wood of history, carved in because of his incessant desire to over-accomplish. Both dictators immortalized by their unique abuse of power.

The Marquis de Sade will always be remembered for his lavish cruelty towards virtuous Justine. Vladimir Nabokov immortalized by his colorful abuse of Lolita. Both authors and characters thriving on the fertile ground of masculine and feminine perversions, immortally harvested through every literary generation.

The immortality of an act requires a high degree of abusive originality. It is not the lofty or dismal moral-mindedness of an act, rather its mind-spiking, tattooing magnification.

Historians, in their attempt to expose and enlighten fanatical behavior, will continue to immortalize republican senator Joseph McCarthy. The senator blacklisted himself into the historical record while blacking-out the genuine future history of his blacklist.

The United States has suffered 106 congresses. Most of them, mostly forgettable, impeachment guarantees uniqueness and immortality. The weight of one’s name on the plates of history is more important than the judgement placed upon the historical record.

Our collective and individual histories surpass biological confines impose by our DNA, reproducing and swelling our mortality through historical posterity.

RC