We have been meditating on gratitude in recent DMs. The peculiar religion being pushed by certain Silicon Valley billionaires currently in very high places in American politics strikes me as being very lacking in either joy or gratitude. But ever so big in visions of apocalypse and destruction.
On reading the four lectures on the antichrist delivered by Peter Thiel behind closed doors in San Francisco two months ago, I did not see any mention of gratitude or joy therein. The same is true in the message and manner of Mr. Musk and his visions, of which one of his dearest seems to be to abandon Earth for Mars, where, apparently, he thinks he will be a happier man.
Both these men wield great power in our country today. Thiel is the patron to the vice president of the United States, having put $15 million into his Ohio Senate race that lifted him from obscurity to the Senate. Last summer, he convinced Donald Trump to make him his vice president. If Trump leaves the presidency due to health issues, whether mental, physical, or both, Vance inherits the position. Thiel, already a prime presidential whisperer for sure, is obsessed by the antichrist archetype (though unwilling to debate me about it).
Musk, as we know, is already responsible for the murder of at least 600,000 people in Africa by denying them USAID, which was literally saving lives by providing AIDS medicines and also food for the most hungry. His fellow billionaire, Bill Gates, put it bluntly: “The richest man in the world is killing the poorest children of the world.”
Such people, quite ignorant of either gratitude or joy, have other things on their minds and in their hearts. They are determined to end democracy and replace it with a body politic designed by and for their own. The current SCOTUS is clearly on their side.
Materialism does that to people and their souls. No doubt this is one reason Jesus cautioned that the very wealthy will find it harder to enter a kingdom of justice and peace than a camel passing through a needle.
Catholic monk Thomas Merton had strong things to say to those whose utopian visions are projected onto outer space, a la Elon Musk’s. Shortly before the first man landed on the moon, he offered this caution: Even if humans can fly, so what? There are flying ants. Even if man flies all over the universe, he is still nothing but a flying ant until he recovers a human center and a human spirit in the depth of his own being.
Furthermore, What can we gain by sailing to the moon [or Mars] if we are not able to cross the abyss that separates us from ourselves? This is the most important of all voyages of discovery, and without it all the rest are not only useless but disastrous.
I fear that Thiel, Musk, Trump and other billionaires pushing for displacing a wounded democracy with a country run by and for billionaires are nothing more than flying ants bringing about a “disastrous” future for humanity and the Earth itself. Just as Merton prophesied. Why?
Because they are fearful men afraid of the most important voyage of discovery, that which separates us from ourselves. Each of them bring their unattended father wounds to the body politic. And bring about an apocalypse and end of the world for all.
Merton, who died about a year after he wrote these words, is now deceased. Musk will one day be dead, Peter Thiel also, Donald Trump also. Death is a reminder that one’s life, the greatest gift we are given, has both a beginning and an end.
What gifts do we choose to leave behind in that interval? Gifts that endure, gifts that uplift, gifts that offer joy and justice for others, including the most needy? Gifts of appreciation?
Otherwise, as Merton tells us, we are nothing but flying ants. Did the universe do its work in bringing our species forward after 14 billion years of gestation just to bring two-legged flying ants into the world? No matter how much money and holdings one (temporarily) clings to?
Banner Image: Losing humanity in the pursuit of superhuman perfection. Photo by Gabriella Clare Marino on Unsplash
Queries for Contemplation
How do you explore “the abyss that separates us from ourselves”? Do you agree that it is the most important of all voyages and that without it disaster threatens? What if Merton’s advice delivered 55 years ago had been heeded and humanity had put as much investment into exploration into our inner space as it has into that of outer space?
Related Readings by Matthew Fox
A Way To God: Thomas Merton’s Creation Spirituality Journey, pp. 121f
Christian Mystics: 365 Readings & Meditations
Trump and the MAGA Movement as Anti-Christ
Meditations with Meister Eckhart: A Centering Book
Passion For Creation: The Earth-Honoring Spirituality of Meister Eckhart
The Tao of Thomas Aquinas: Fierce Wisdom for Hard Times, pp. 41f.
Sheer Joy: Conversations with Thomas Aquinas on Creation Spirituality, pp. 57-188
Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality
Creation Spirituality: Liberating Gifts for the Peoples of the Earth
A Spirituality Named Compassion: Uniting Mystical Awareness with Social Justice
6 thoughts on “Ingratitude in the Religion Silicon Valley Billionaires Are Pushing”
“For every seeing soul there are two absorbing facts, – I and the abyss.” Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Fortunately, I learned this in my youth and spent my early adult years picking through the darkness and confusion of the world until I found my own way out. I would agree that it is the most important journey we each make, if not the only one; and that without a deeper, spiritual understanding of life’s purpose, disaster threatens both ourselves and the world.
I had not heard the abyss analogy before for not knowing who one is, something I suddenly felt in mid-Atlantic when coming by ship to the US for the first time in my early twenties. I was brought up without spirituality/religion but began to encounter it in my late teens and have spent my life exploring it and in finding out who I am. Women are expected to be more people and family oriented, and whether or not that fits a woman’s personality, I think that cultural expectation protects the majority of them from the kind of insanity of the men mentioned in today’s meditation.
The “abyss that separates us from ourselves” is deep, but only 12 inches wide, the distance between our head and our heart. On a circle the size of the Earth, we first avoid the abyss by choosing the 25,000 miles minus 12 inches path (Dorothy’s “Yellow Brick Road” and Coelho’s “Personal Legend”). Some die on the path, some turn back and tackle their 12 inches personal Comedia.
“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.” [Eliot]
BUT: “Should the planet become uninhabitable before mankind has reached maturity; should there be a premature lack of bread or essential metals; or, what would be still more serious, an insufficiency, either in quantity or quality, of cerebral matter needed to store, transmit, and increase the sum total of knowledge and aspirations that at any given moment make up the collective germ of the noosphere: should any of those conditions occur, then, there can be no doubt that it would mean the failure of life on earth; and the world’s effort fully to centre upon itself could only be attempted again elsewhere at some other point in the heavens.” [Teilhard de Chardin]
Yes, the inner contemplative spiritual journey is essential by making silent daily centering/contemplative prayer part of our unique daily lives with others, with beautiful Sacred Mother Earth, and with All spiritual beings/dimensions of our evolving and Sacred Cosmos.
Two recent recommendations by our current pope and by a contemporary contemplative mystic:
1) YouTube message by Pope Leo on his subscription channel ‘Path of Faith,’ called “Trump EXPLODES After Pope Leo XIV DESTROYS Him in a Brutal Message.” It’s actually a powerful spiritual message that applies to all of us on our spiritual journeys.
2) “A Way To God: Thomas Merton’s Creation Spirituality,” by Matthew Fox.
I am somewhat troubled by the mismatch between the very “un-Popesque” title “Trump EXPLODES After Pope Leo XIV DESTROYS Him in a Brutal Message” and its false attribution to the “Path of Faith” channel in which no such unsavory and violent title can be found. I regret that a comment deploring that mistaken reference has disappeared overnight: it rightly asked “Am I the only one who finds that title violent?” Of course not, and thank you for flagging it !
The link that led to the “brutal” video-fake conveying the so-called “Pope’s message” has rightly been removed, but, respectfully and in all fairness, the entire offensive title should also be removed as it is the opposite of “a powerful spiritual message”.
If I remember rightly, Teresa of Avila taught that spiritual development only happens through experiential self knowledge, prayer, and humility. These are essential for the survival of the human race IMO. But AI is the greatest threat to that because it learns and grows on its own, according to the book, “Nexus” by Nuval Noah Harari; he traces the history of networks up to the present. Each, like the alphabet and printing press, changed the culture. But AI is already being used to throw people off of Social Security, to get detailed information on every single one of us, and to create lifelike appearing and acting robots to establish “relationships” with vulnerable people—among other evil. When I finished the book, I thought the only way to stop it would be to destroy all the data centers, but they are surely heavily guarded and could be replaced anyway. I pray that enough people wake up to their humanity and divinity and resist in every peaceful way.