Fuckful Saturday: Cosmic Fuck

Fresh cosmic vibes for weary humans

This week’s design is inspired by the Big Bang, vastness of time, and recent (in cosmology terms) emergence of humanity.

Extra Fucks to Give

#54 Cosmic Fuck

They don’t call it the Big Bang for nothin’.

In Jewish faith and culture, each life is viewed as a whole world, a connected universe of possibilities and future life. To destroy one life is to destroy an entire world. Conversely, to save a life is to preserve a world. The specifics of the life are not a factor; each life, a world.

This axiom comes from the Talmud, a written collection of oral rabbinic teachings from the 3rd-6th centuries. The Talmud is a deeper dive into the principles of the Hebrew Bible. Similar, but not really, to how Christians use the New Testament as further exploration of the Old Testament. However, the Old Testament in the Christian Bible is an expression of Jewish theology as much as TexMex represents Mexican cuisine.

Jews and Christians do not study or act in accordance to the same theology. They don’t share a book or the same relationship with belief in The Divine.

And because of this, I’d like you to consider why there are more people in the United States who identify as Christian Zionists than there are Jewish people in existence on the entire planet. Why not all Jews support Zionism.

Because when you get down to root of the genocide against Palestinians, and the enormous conflict profiteering, beyond the Western propaganda and Israeli hasbara, this is the question you need to start with:

Why are Western Christian Zionists so eager for Arab worlds to be ended, and a Jewish supremacy expanded in the Hold Land?

Why is that?

I have my own beliefs about why this is, as does theology, but it’s more important for others to rationalize, or simply theorize, why Zionism as a political philosophy is a priority for these so-called followers of Christ.

I mean this not as a doubt of someone’s identity or faith, but as a question of their ethics in action, compared to the teachings that they allegedly adhere to. See, there’s this funny thing about what people say they believe, and what they actually do—talk the talk, walk the walk.

Daily practice, the point of following theological beliefs as a way to guide one’s life toward more ethical understandings, and actions of humanity, as much as any concepts of closeness to The Divine, or an afterlife, or reincarnation, or nothing, depending on the theology you may or may not put stock in.

Ballpark figure, there are 10,000 unique and established beliefs about creation and how we should spend our time on Earth. There are 12 major religions on the planet. All of them focus on the value of existence in unity with life. If you boil the major faiths down to a simple concept, it is to spend our time in collaboration with our world and each other; what some may call the gift of The Divine.

Respect life, and act in ways that value and support life.

That’s it. That’s the whole theological mystery in simple terms. Take the religion out of it, same conclusion.

There will be no humanity left in our universe if we continue to destroy world after world after world.

Great unknowns shape the direction of our lives, and as far as we know, we can never fully understand our purpose or place in the universe. We’re lucky if we can understand ourselves half the time.

No one knows why we’re here, what the universe is, or what it’s all about.

No one knows what awaits us in the great cosmic fuck of here, or beyond.

A scary concept to many people, to accept not knowing. Perhaps so scary that it drives some to total madness and destruction. It would explain a lot wrong with our world. But that fear also drives others into opposite action. For some, not knowing means we make value of life by protecting life.

I know many protectors of life, and I’d bet on the odds that you do, too.

In the vastness of time and space, humanity hasn’t been around very long. The concept of human rights has been around even less—officially since after The Holocaust, which destroyed so many worlds for Jews, Roma, Afro-Germans, homosexuals and gender-queer, people with disabilities, religious minorities, political minorities, anyone that crossed a Nazi on the wrong day…

All of us are still learning how to be human. Most of us still strive to live our best life while doing the least amount of harm to others, and maybe more importantly, the least amount of harm to ourselves. The people who don’t believe each life is a world try to convince us that we’re the problem, that there is something wrong with us when we don’t fit into their inhumanity.

There’s nothing wrong with being humane or wanting to save worlds. Don’t let these fascist motherfuckers twist your mind. To have act in accordance with the value of life is the greatest strength humans possess.

When we don’t dehumanize and we don’t destroy, we are bettering ourselves as much as the worlds around us. We don’t have to be perfect, we just have to learn and do better. Humanity isn’t an ideal, it’s the bare minimum.

Each day, we are a little more traumatized, absolutely, but also a little more experienced. And, hopefully, we continue to ask more questions about why the world is the way it is.

Jewish tradition values learning, encourages questions and (in good faith) debate. This is what my adoptive father taught me about Judaism. After he died in 2018, I began attending Jewish lessons on the Talmud, in particular the Pirkei Avot, which addresses life lessons and ethics; a deep dive into what daily practice actually looks like.

What the Talmud taught me about my Jewish father was that he chose action of mitzvah, a good deed, because he saw the value of my life and raised me as an extension of his world, a world grounded by Jewish ethics.

The first thing I learned about Jewish people was love. These terrible times can’t take that away. It is because of this, that I believe each life is an entire world, woven into an incomprehensible universe.

… except for Dick Cheney.

Just kidding. His life is an entire world, too. He and Bibi’s worlds should be laid bare before the International Criminal Court, along with a laundry list of other destroyers of worlds.