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Three years ago I purchased an old house in a small village in western Hungary, and I have spent the last three summers renovating it. The major renovations – plumbing, electrical wiring, flooring, bathroom remodeling, kitchen instillation, interior remodeling, painting – were all completed the first summer. I dedicated the next two summers to roof repair, insulation instillation, and a furnace upgrade.

This summer I plan to tile the terrace floor and put some faux brick ceramic tiles on the terrace’s exterior walls. I also plan to convert one of the outbuildings on the property into a sort of summer kitchen, complete with an outdoor grill, oven, and fireplace. If I have enough time and money, I may begin to remodel my small brick barn and convert it into a workshop/storage space.

Working on houses runs in my family. For example, my father has built four houses in his life and has completed countless renovations projects as well. I helped him on three of the houses, which was a wonderful experience. It’s worth noting that my father is a chef by training, and I am still amazed by how he learned the ins-and-outs of construction and home repair in his spare time next to his full-time job.

I inherited some of my father’s skill in construction, but nowhere near the same level. This means my renovation efforts often take twice as long as they should and involve some humorous errors and omissions that often force me to backtrack, deconstruct the error, and start all over again. Needless to say, I leave potentially dangerous tasks like electrical wiring and plumbing to the professionals; otherwise, I try to do as much as I can myself. Though I have immensely enjoyed working on my house, I remember to keep it all in perspective and not obsess about it.

I say this because home construction and renovation has evolved into somewhat of a fetish in our contemporary world. The countless television programs focusing on house design, construction, house-flipping, and renovation attest to this. There is nothing inherently wrong with building and fixing up homes, but I suspect our current obsession with all things real estate has much to do with our spiritual emptiness and the rampant materialism of our societies. At best, building or fixing up a home provides some meaning in life– at least for a little while.

My father was ahead of the curve in terms of building and renovating. He built and sold homes as side projects in addition to his full-time job long before home construction became a hip and popular thing to do on television. To be sure, my father was motivated by profit when he built and sold houses, but it never developed into an obsession, and he never lost sight of the bigger picture. Although house building provided him with some meaning, he did not allow it to supersede higher meaning.

I keep this in my mind while I work on my own house during the summer. I avoid the “keeping up the Joneses” trap and only complete projects I can pay for out-of-pocket, which means my house still has plenty of bare light bulbs hanging on wires, unfinished trim, and under-furnished spaces. But I would rather complete the renovations as money allows than go into debt in exchange for some instant gratification.

And I suppose that is the best thing about my old house here in Hungary. Unlike the vast majority of homeowners in the West, I was able to buy my home with cash. Avoiding the mortgage trap was a lifelong ambition of mine, and after more than a decade of living in rented apartments, I am glad I have been able to achieve this goal. Having no mortgage means I possess the house rather than having the house possess me. And I will not allow it to completely possess me in any way, shape, or form, even in the midst of an enormous bathroom overhaul.

This old house has given me some breathing room. It has allowed me to loosen the chains of material necessity a little, which in turn has allowed me to focus more time and energy on more important things. There is no way I would sacrifice that for the sake of granite kitchen countertops I cannot, at the present time, afford. No way at all.

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Choose Death. A Few Random Thoughts About the Film "Trainspotting"

31/5/2019

Irvine Welsh became somewhat of a household name in the mid-nineties after his novel Trainspotting was adapted into a film starring Ewan McGregor. I first watched the film a few years after its release, and I recently re-watched the film again. It was a strange experience. On the one hand, I enjoyed the story and the characters immensely (usually for the wrong reasons). On the other hand, I found the premise and themes presented in the movie terribly depressing and nihilistic.

After I had watched the film in the nineties, I attempted to read Welsh’s novel upon which the movie is based, but I could not make it past the first thirty or forty pages. Unlike other readers who abandon Welsh’s fiction a few chapters into a novel, I was not put off by the Edinburgh vernacular slang style Welsh employs, but the bleak brutality of Welsh’s nihilistic vision.

I once read a newspaper article or review which stated Welsh is obsessed with teleology and that his novels are all essentially teleological experiments in which Welsh explores the dark and desperate side of the human condition in an effort to find his characters’ ultimate purpose in life – their intrinsic telos. Though this sounds immensely noble, I do not believe Welsh has succeeded in finding any explanations for any of his characters’ goals or ends.

Like so many contemporary writers, Irvine Welsh gets what the problem of human life in the modern world is. This is nowhere more apparent than in the now famous “Choose Life” monologue the protagonist Mark Renton rifles off at the beginning of the film adaptation of Trainspotting. (The monologue in the novel differs slightly, but the message is essentially the same):

“Choose Life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a fucking big television, choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players and electrical tin openers. Choose good health, low cholesterol, and dental insurance. Choose fixed interest mortgage repayments. Choose a starter home. Choose your friends. Choose leisurewear and matching luggage. Choose a three-piece suit on hire purchase in a range of fucking fabrics. Choose DIY and wondering who the fuck you are on Sunday morning. Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing, spirit-crushing game shows, stuffing fucking junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pissing your last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, fucked up brats you spawned to replace yourselves. Choose your future. Choose life… But why would I want to do a thing like that? I chose not to choose life. I chose somethin’ else. And the reasons? There are no reasons. Who needs reasons when you’ve got heroin?”

As mentioned above, Welsh clearly sees where the problems of modern life lie – materialism, mass consumerism, financial slavery, mass media addiction, alienation, aimlessness – but like so many other contemporary writers, Welsh refuses to acknowledge or accept the only antidote to the nihilistic wasteland he so poignantly recognizes and identifies. This is what made Trainspotting such a depressing film in the end.

The hapless characters try to escape their despair through heroin, which inevitable only deepens their despair. The protagonist, Renton, eventually overcomes his addiction, betrays his friends, and steals money from a drug deal in an effort to redeem himself and relaunch his life. Yet what does he ultimately choose? He Chooses Life. The job. The career. The washing machines and all the rest of it. In other words, Renton goes full circle and ends up fully embracing the materialistic nightmare he had spent the vast majority of the film trying to escape through drugs.

To me, this reveals Welsh either does not understand Reality or is openly antagonistic toward any notion of Reality. And this is not simply a case of an author creating characters who do not reflect the author’s actual worldview. When I watched Trainspotting and read what little I did of the novel, it became quite clear, at least to me, that Welsh’s characters are essentially mouthpieces of Welsh’s outlook on life, as the following excerpt from Trainspotting (the novel) demonstrates:

“Ah don’t really know, Tam, ah jist dinnae. It kinday makes things seem mair real tae us. Life’s boring and futile. We start aof wi high hopes, then we bottle it. We realise that we’re aw gaunnae die, withoot really findin oot the big answers. We develop aw they long-winded ideas which just interpret the reality ay oor lives in different weys, withoot really extending oor body ay worthwhile knowledge, about the big things, the real things. Basically, we live a short, disappointing life; and then we die. We fill up oor lives wi shite, things like careers and relationships tae delude oorsels that it isnae totally pointless. Smack’s an honest drug, because it strips away these delusions. Wi smack, whin ye feel good, ye feel immortal. Whin ye feel bad, it intensifies the shite that’s already thair. It’s the only really honest drug. It doesnae alter yer consciousness. It just gies ye a hit and a sense ay well-being. Eftir that, ye see the misery ay the world as it is, and ye cannae anaesthetise yirsel against it.”

As much as I enjoyed the film, the “resolution” Welsh’s story offers at the end is no resolution all. Deep down, Welsh seems to recognize this – knows it is a cop-out – but it is the only resolution he is willing to provide because he is utterly hostile to the only real resolution.

Hence, there are no answers, at least none worth considering. When Renton grins at the end of the film and happily claims to be Choosing Life, he is ultimately Choosing Death, and that is what makes Irvine Welsh’s vision of life – a vision of nothingness – so terribly saddening and, ultimately, unsatisfying.

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If You - A Note to Self

30/5/2019

If you obsess over security, you will not be brave. If you crave comfort above all else, you will not be courageous. If you think and act only when convenient, you will not think or act heroically. If you experience constant anxiety, you will not be free to discover purpose. If you are not free to discover purpose, you will not create. And if you do not create, you will never experience life at its fullest.

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Berdyaev's Answer to Monism or Dualism? How About Both?

29/5/2019

Monism or dualism? It’s an old argument. Do mind/soul and matter co-exist as one single entity or can mind/soul be separated from matter and exist separately? When I was younger, I bounced back and forth between these two possibilities, yet I could never comfortable remain on one side for too long without feeling the tug of the other side pulling me back. My essential problem was this – despite being essentially diametrically opposed, both monism and dualism made sense to me and both seemed necessary. I felt comfortable in both, and I often found myself questioning why both could not exist simultaneously.

I experienced the same dilemma when confronted with the nature of the world. Is the world essentially evil, fallen, and sinful? Or is it essentially good, redeemed, and sinless? The same holds true for immanence and transcendence. Is God inside or outside the world? As I pondered these questions, I once again found myself favoring the existence of both, but favoring both seems paradoxical and contradictory – a massive example of having your cake and eating it, too. Nevertheless, I have always felt intuitively comfortable within this inherent paradox, so much so that I very much doubt I could survive without it.

Nikolai Berdyaev also found comfort in the paradox I described above. In his book The Meaning of the Creative Act he explicitly states that the two contradictory sides are necessary for it is within them and the paradox they create that the final mystery of Christianity is to be found. The following selection of excerpts from The Meaning of the Creative Act present Berdyaev's views this seeming paradox. (Bold added by me.)
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I know that I may be accused of a basic contradiction which tears apart all my sense of the world, all my world outlook. I shall be accused of the contradiction of combining an extreme religious dualism with an extreme religious monism. I accept such attacks in advance. I confess an almost Manichean dualism. So be it. The world is evil, it is without God and not created by Him. We must go out of the world, overcome it completely: the world must be consumed, it is of the nature of Ahriman. Freedom from the world is the pathos of this book. There is an objective source of evil, against which we must wage heroic war. The necessity of the given world and the given world are of Ahriman.

Over and against this stands freedom in the spirit, life in divine love, life in the Pleroma. And I also confess an almost pantheistic monism. The world is divine in its very nature. Man is, by his nature, divine. The world process is self-revelation of Divinity, it is taking place within Divinity. God is immanent in the world and in Man. The world and Man are immanent in God. There is no dualism of divine and extra-divine nature, of God’s absolute transcendence of the world and man.

I am entirely conscious of this antinomy of dualism and monism, and I accept it as insurmountable in consciousness and inevitable in religious life. Religious consciousness is essentially antinomic. In our consciousness, there is no escape from the eternal antinomy of transcendent and immanent, of monism and dualism. This antinomy cannot be abolished, neither in conscience nor in reason, but in religious life, in the depth of the religious experience itself. Religious consciousness experiences the world to the fullest extent, both as completely apart from God and as fully divine, experience evil both as falling away from divine reason, and as having an immanent meaning in the process of the world’s development.

A transcendent attitude towards God and towards evil are inevitable in religious experience. But equally inevitable in religious life is the attainment of the immanent truth and the immanent experience of God and the world. And in the final depths, every mystic experience passes beyond all the opposition between the transcendent and the immanent.

This kind of radical, revolutionary, implacable dualism leads to the final monism of divine life, to the divinity of man. This is the whole mystery of Christianity. Through the heroic dualism, through the contrast of the divine and “the world” man enters into the monism of Divine Life. Everything in the world must be lifted on the Cross. Thus, the divine development is realized, the divine creativity. Everything external becomes something inward. And the whole world is my way.

This antinomy is given in religious experience. Only childishly-immature, simple, frightened consciousness is afraid of this antinomy: it is always dreaming of some idealization and justification of evil in the immanent-monistic thesis of antinomy.

The final human mystery is the birth of God in man. The last mystery of God is the birth of man in God. And this mystery is the one and only mystery: for not only has man need of God, but God has need of man. In this lies the mystery of Christ, the mystery of the God-man.

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Someone Please Call The United Kingdom and Tell Them to Take Their Weather Back

29/5/2019

May in rain is worth gold.

This is common expression here in Hungary, and if there is any truth in it, then this little landlocked country has been experiencing the Midas touch and will soon become the richest country on the planet.

It has rained nearly every day here for the past month. I can literally count the number of sunny days in May on one hand. Though I do not normally grumble about the weather, my bucket is nearly full, so to speak. The gloomy overcast sky is one thing, but the now seemingly perpetual precipitation has gone beyond being a minor inconvenience to being a major nuisance.

For example, the rain prevented me from cutting the grass (actually weeds and wildflowers) for nearly three weeks. When I finally had the chance to wheel the old lawnmower out, I was confronted by thirty-centimeter high vegetation. It took me nearly three hours to mow the lawn (more like a varied association of stinging nettles, dandelions, bindweed, couch, green alkanet, poppies, and an assortment of other weeds and flowers I am unfamiliar with). To put the experience into perspective, it usually takes me an hour to cut the grass. However, cutting the grass last week was akin to carving a pioneer trail through the virgin Canadian wilderness armed with nothing but a dull plastic spatula.

The weather we have been experiencing here lately has reminded me of the weather I experienced when I lived in Morpeth, England in 2014 – 2015. Strange as it sounds, the wet weather and overcast skies did not bother me when I lived in England, but they are driving me crazy over here in Hungary. In light of this, I beg those living in the United Kingdom to call their weather back to heel and summon it back across the English Channel where it belongs, far from the eastern periphery of Mitteleuropa, which should have been basking in sunshine weeks ago.

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Woman Carrying Faggot

28/5/2019

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Faggot meaning a bundle of sticks of course. This Mihály Munkácsy painting is among the most reproduced paintings in Hungary and can be found in many homes and state buildings. The original title - Rőzsehordo nő - literally translates to Woman Carrying Faggot.

I am no fan of the language police, but I wish the fine people who translate and print the titles of artworks and books from other languages would take a moment to consider the possible negative connotations of certain words in English - not in an effort to defend certain politically correct sensitivities, but rather to avoid tarnishing a work of art with modern, offensive slang meanings. I mean, just imagine what the average, unsophisticated modern person pictures in their minds when they hear the English title of this painting. On second thought, perhaps it's best not to imagine that at all.

In any event, this iconic painting ranks among Munkácsy's best known works. I am rather fond of it myself. What I admire about the depiction of this peasant woman carrying her bundle of sticks is Munkácsy's seeming refusal to over-romanticize. I have a soft spot in my heart for paintings depicting agrarian and pastoral scenes; however, overtly idealistic depictions of peasants, shepherds, and rural life tend to leave me cold. Luckily, Munkácsy does not indulge in such idealism in this painting. The woman he paints here is strong and healthy, but the expression on her face as she sits resting in the forest reveals a life of hard work and toil. It is not an expression of defeat or suffering, but rather of quiet contemplation during a moment of reprieve from the seemingly endless flow of physical labor marking her life.

Rőzsehordó nő (Translated as Woman Carrying Faggot) . Mihály Munkácsy - 1873

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Be Wary of the Feigned Retreat

27/5/2019

We have to remember our current war is essentially spiritual in nature. Though the battles we witness seem to occur squarely in the material realm, the spiritual dimension underpins them all. With this in mind, we must remember never to grow complacent or careless when it appears we have won a battle or have driven the enemy into retreat. After all, not all retreat is real retreat and not all surrender is real surrender.

The feigned retreat is an ancient battle tactic. Sun Tzu mentions it in his Art of War. The Spartans used it at the battle of Thermopylae. William the Conqueror used it, not once but twice, at Hastings. The tactic relies on appearing to surrender a position and pretending to retreat in order to lure the enemy into what seems like a position of dominance, but is in reality a position of vulnerability. The tactic is extremely difficult to implement and requires an immense amount of skill and discipline. However, if executed effectively, the feigned retreat can inflict devastating damage on opponents.

The genius behind the feigned retreat lies in a fundamental understanding of human nature. When an army senses it is getting the upper hand in a battle and is effectively trouncing its opposition, it sees any opening the enemy offers as a chance to inflict the kill shot and end the battle.

Spurred on by the adrenaline rush of apparent victory in plain sight, the attacking army allows emotions to get the better of it. Fueled on by the jubilation of winning, the attacking army becomes undisciplined and careless. It may break formation, reveal its weak spots, and cease listening to its commanders as it enthusiastically pursues what it perceives to be an enemy in flight. Unaware of the trap that has been set, the attacking army is both emotionally and physically overwhelmed when, instead of sealing a sure victory, they encounter what an expected, formidable, and often fatal counter strike.

Feigned retreats exist in spiritual warfare as well, so we must remember to keep our wits and emotions in check whenever we see our enemy retreat before us. We must ask ourselves the following question - Have we truly defeated them in battle or are they merely attempting to lure us into a position of vulnerability?

One factor to take into consideration is time. Physical battles tend to have certain time constraints. Spiritual battles know no such boundaries. A feigned retreat in a physical battle is immediate and instantaneous, lasting minutes or hours. A feigned retreat in a spiritual battle can last weeks, months, years, decades, perhaps even centuries. In light of this, we must remember never to be smug, proud, or complacent when presented with apparent victory. Even if we retake conquered territory and hold it successfully for years, we must remain vigilant and leave open the possibility that our victory might be nothing more than a feigned retreat and we have occupied what amounts to little more than a well-laid trap. Though we may seem secure in victory, our enemy may actually be biding their time, taking notes, and finalizing plans for their eventual counter strike.

This is by no means meant to inspire paranoia or instill a defeatist attitude. In the end, light will conquer darkness, but until then there will be many casualties. One way to avoid becoming a casualty is to remain aware of the feigned retreat tactic and to recognize it whenever it is implemented against you.

As an example of the feigned retreat tactic, I have taken a scene from my novel in which Viktor Vilinovich, Budapest’s reigning crime boss, decides to implement the tactic in an effort to discover the true identities of the forces conspiring against him. If you feel so inclined, I invite you to read the excerpt below, which presents both the physical and spiritual dimension of the feigned retreat tactic.

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He had worked hard to get to where he was – he was unwilling to lose any of it to anyone at any price. He knew that if he gave up even the smallest portion of the empire he had worked so hard to create, it would render those early, ugly, cold years meaningless. It was unthinkable. Yet, as he stood before the window watching the snow fall, Vilinovich considered the unthinkable and began making plans for a small retreat.

Forces were conspiring against him in Budapest. Small, disorganized armies assembled along the edges of his empire. The first round of cannon fire had already shaken the walls of his fortress. Vilinovich’s first impulse had been to fight them, but his life under communism had taught him about the foolishness of such rash actions. The best thing to do was fall back, feign a retreat without so much as a counter strike.

After he withdrew, the hostile forces would fool themselves into thinking they had defeated him and would step out into the open to celebrate their victory. He would watch them pillage and divvy up the small portion of his empire he had relinquished. As they enjoyed the spoils of his hard-earned empire, they would grow smug and careless. This would give Vilinovich a chance to see and determine just who his enemies really were. Once he had taken down the names, he would wait until the enemy became complacent. Then, when enough time had passed, he would surprise them all by striking back.

He would be ruthless. Merciless. He would reconquer his lost territory, and exterminate every person who had dared to challenge his authority. But in order for it all to come about, he had to give up a small piece of his empire first. The idea of it was unbearable. He had worked too hard. Come too far. But as he stood staring out at the ugly snowfall, Viktor Vilinovich knew there could be no other way.

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Why Did I Bother to Salvage These Books?

26/5/2019

I categorize the books on my shelves into two broad but distinct categories: books I have purchased and books I have found. Books I have purchased are either books I really wanted or books I needed for some university course or other. Books I have found are a hodgepodge collection of titles I salvaged mostly from New York City dustbins and curbsides where stumbling across entire collections of books left on a street corner is quite common. Some of the books I found in New York are treasures – Goethe’s Italian Journey, Wheelock’s Latin, a hardcover edition of David Copperfield, a collection of poems by Coleridge. Others, not so much.

I took a good, hard look at my bookshelf today and asked myself why I even bothered salvaging the seven hardcover Tom Clancy novels I had noticed in a neat stack on the corner of 32nd Street and Ditmars in Astoria, Queens nine years ago. I have had all seven for nearly a decade, but I have never even considered opening one, and I very much doubt I ever will read any of them. Yet there they are – a row of massive, bulky rectangles lined up on the shelf next to my desk. And Tom Clancy is but the tip of the iceberg. Here is a brief list of other questionable books I picked up somewhere in the past and took home with me under the delusion that I might one day read them:

Five Acres and Independence, M.G Kairns
Cancer Free!
The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins
The Portable Atheist, Christopher Hitchens
The Girl Who Kicked People in the Face (or whatever the exact titles of Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy are).
Stitch n Bitch: The Complete Knitter’s Handbook
Ronald Reagan: An American Life
How to Make the Stock Market Make Money for You
Margaret Thatcher: The Path to Power
The Complete Guide to Import/Export
About 100 Harlequin romances not even my wife will touch
Eisenhower at War
A half-dozen novels by Robert Ludlum
The Secret Lives of John Lennon
The Window Style Book

And at least fifty other titles I will likely never, ever read. Well, I may glance at the atheist books just to get a feel for the arguments, and I could read a Ludlum book in the summer sometime, but somehow I just cannot foresee myself ever settling down into a chair to flip through The Window Style Book.

If I still lived in America or Canada, I would try to sell these books, or I would simply give them to some charity shop, but I live in Hungary now, which means Eat to Beat Cancer and Hammer! by Armand Hammer will probably stay on my shelves until I die.

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Rivers of Poppies Flow Through the Fields

24/5/2019

Poppy Field - 1896 - Pál Merse Szinyei (1845-1920)

Rivers of red poppies have begun to flow through the landscape surrounding my village. In some places, their delicate petals merely fleck the now verdant landscape, but in other spots they gather together and flood the fields with long, winding, fluvial lines.

Under a slight breeze the red rivers come to life and silently flow through the fields toward the horizon where they tumble from the edge of the earth and empty their red into the setting sun.

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Ye Cannot Serve Two Masters - Some (Half-Formed) Personal Interpretations

23/5/2019

“No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other, Ye cannot serve God and mammon.”

Located most prominently in the Gospel of Matthew, this is perhaps one of Jesus’s most famous sayings. I am skeptical of many verses in the Gospel of Matthew, but consider the basic message contained in this expression to be vital. Many analyses and interpretations of this verse can be found in books and online, ranging from every possible perspective including straightforward discussion to detailed linguistic/etymological deconstructions.

Hence, my goal here will not be to provide a detailed and comprehensive overview of this verse, but rather to set down a few simple ideas presenting my own personal intuitive understanding of what serving two masters implies. None of what I offer in the following should be considered definitive in any sense of the world. These are my intuitions based on my own personal experiences and should be taken as such.

To me, two masters comes down to a matter of thinking. The verse challenges the limits of imagination. For example, serving a master implies anything but freedom and agency, yet serving the proper master is the epitome of freedom and agency itself.

To begin with, it is worth noting that this gospel verse has become a common idiom. As such, it has been mixed in with other vernacular idioms used in common speech. As a result, the sanctity of the original verse has been either severely distorted or entirely removed. Though likely ignorant of or indifferent to its source, most modern atheistic/materialistic people do use the phrase and can dimly acknowledge the wisdom contained in the warning against simultaneously serving two masters. However, when God is removed from the expression, the idiom is reduced to the mere level of divided loyalties, conflicting pursuits, and contradictory responsibilities.

Serving two masters means something entirely different to atheists/materialists. For positivistic, materialistic, reductionist types, the division between two masters never amounts to conflicting loyalties between God and mammon, but manifest more as a conflict between mammon and mammon or one of its various guises such as hedonism and mammon or sloth and mammon. As a result, what the non-religious perceive as a conflict between two masters is really more of an internal conflict between two aspects of the same single master – materialism. To their credit, people who serve mammon have at least made a decision, and they are unlikely to experience the same sorts of torments as those who attempt to serve both God and mammon simultaneously.

Christians, on the other hand, should be able to draw a clear distinction between the two masters Jesus mentions and also sense and understand why only one can truly exist as a master. At the most elementary level, I see this distinction as the difference between the spiritual and the material; and the metaphysical and the physical; as well the difference between subject and object; freedom and slavery.

Human beings are hybrid blends of the spiritual and the material. As such, we have metaphysical as well as physical needs. Voluntarily choosing to serve spiritual needs above material needs is not a matter of blindly nullifying, denying, or obstructing physical needs, but rather a matter of aligning our physical needs with our metaphysical needs by giving the spiritual precedence over the material. In this sense, the spiritual guides and controls the physical.

Ranking the spiritual over the material does not imply the material is unimportant, trivial, or unnecessary. Nor does it mean the material is inherently evil, mundane, or profane. Serving the spiritual rather than the material does not negate the material of its significance and necessity in this life.

Instead, serving the spiritual provides the proper framework through which one engages with and interacts with the material world by rendering the material to the position of something that serves the individual and God in this life rather than something the individual and God must serve in this life.

In this life is crucial here because our lives in this world mark the boundaries of the material world, whereas our lives outside this world know no such boundaries. The old saying, "You can't take it with you" takes on a significant level of profundity here because it reveals where your real focus should lie.

As I mentioned earlier, most modern people focus exclusively on physical needs because they are utterly oblivious to, willfully ignorant of, or purposefully opposed to their inherent metaphysical needs. Whatever the reason, mammon is the only master most modern people serve.

Modern Christians are sometimes no better than their secular/materialist counterparts. Many modern Christians claim to serve God, but in practice serve mammon. This stems from a lack of purpose or errant motivations, but I also feel many Christians consciously attempt to serve both mammon and God. I believe this happens because they misinterpret the wisdom Jesus reveals in the two masters saying and comprehend God in the same manner in which they comprehend mammon – as an external object.

Seen this way, God becomes a remote and ruthless ruler existing only to punish sin and prevent pleasure. Serving such a God becomes untenable and is tantamount to slavery. When confronted by such a God, it is little wonder Christians attempt to serve mammon as well.

Conversely, some Christians believe the two masters verse reveals the material world to be evil/fallen. If the material world is fallen/evil, then a Christian must shun and detest the material world by embracing God through some extreme form of asceticism. I am not averse to the notion of asceticism and believe it can be a valuable tool in spiritual growth, but I do not think the ultimate goal of Christianity is universal worldly asceticism. If our true purpose in this world amounted to nothing more denying or hating the world, we would not have come into the world at all.

The way I see it, our purpose in this world should provide the foundation for the wisdom contained in the two masters verse. True spiritual purpose emanates only from the Divine Self. The Divine Self is God within. Serving God does not entail perpetually bowing before altars and perpetual penance. Serving God entails serving your Divine Self. It is a matter of immanence as much as it is a matter of transcendence. Serving your Divine Self implies working with and being useful for in order to achieve, participate, and create.

Serving your Divine Self amounts to aligning yourself to God’s will in an effort to allow your purpose to manifest in the world. Seen in this light, God and the Divine Self exist in the realm of subjects (Beings) while mammon exists only in the realm of objects (things).

When you serve God, you create a situation where objects exist to serve subjects. For example, you use your physical body (this is not mammon in the strict sense of the word, but I interpret mammon to mean the material) to serve your Divine Self – to help it learn and experience, achieve its purpose, and, enter into a collaborative creative state with God. I would classify this as positive motivation.

When you serve mammon, you create a situation where subjects exist to serve objects. For example, you use your physical body solely to acquire money or seek pleasure without giving any thought to or willfully ignoring the purpose of your Divine Self. The Divine Self is obstructed, its purpose distorted, and collaborative creation with God becomes increasingly difficult, perhaps even impossible. I would classify this as negative motivation.

The same principle applies to money – literal mammon. If you serve God, you use money to serve your Divine Self and its true purpose. If you serve mammon, you use money to serve only your material self and distorted purpose. If you attempt to serve both God and mammon, you will create confusion and discord as subject and object compete and clash for dominance.

The principle of gain can also be applied here.

When you serve mammon, you rank material gains over spiritual ones and sacrifice the spiritual in favor of the material. The subject becomes enslaved to the object. Slavery ensues.

When you serve God, you use mammon to achieve spiritual gains. Depending on your purpose and circumstances, this may involve accumulating or sacrificing mammon. Either way, it never involves ranking material gains over spiritual ones. The object serves the subject. Freedom is maintained.

When you attempt to reconcile God and mammon by making them both masters, you create conditions for spiritual confusion and torment by laying the foundations for alienation and loathing. The Divine Self's impulse toward freedom is impeded by the dull force of object slavery. Those who attempt to serve two masters become acutely aware of the freedom they have surrendered and the slavery they must endure. To survive, they learn to hold to one and despise the other. It is a hellish state.

Unlike Jesus, who served God unfailingly throughout his entire life, we are flawed beings. As such, it is nearly impossible for us to be perfectly aligned with God (the Divine Self) all the time. We will make mistakes and attempt to serve two masters, or perhaps even abandon God to serve mammon exclusively from time to time. During these transgressions, it is our duty to repent, remember our true purpose, reset our motivations, and return to serving the one and only true master.

This is easier said than done, but done it must be. Through repentance, we can recover from these dips and plunges, learn what we need to learn from experience, and resume an upward trajectory.

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Some Pictures Are Worth 500,000 Words

22/5/2019

Mihály Munkácsy (1844 – 1900) is still one of Hungary's most celebrated painters. Internationally, he is best known for his genre pictures and large scale biblical paintings. In Hungary, his name graces many streets, squares, and schools. At his peak, he enjoyed fame and success, but as is the case with many painters, Munkácsy's life followed a rather tragic arc, one plagued by severe depression which, coupled with the syphilis he had contracted as a young man, eventually drove him mad.

Though I respect Munkácsy, I do not rank him among my favorite Hungarian painters (I more or less put him in the same category as István Csok). Nevertheless, I have a high regard for Munkácsy's genre pictures, specifically for his Siralomház (often translated as The Last Day of a Condemened Man, though verbatim the Hungarian word translates to Lamentation House, which is more synonymous with the English concept of Death Row). The painting appears below.

The Last Day of a Condemned Man - Mihály Munkácsy - 1869

This painting brought Munkácsy to the attention of the world and many consider it his first masterpiece. I consider it a masterpiece as well, but my high appraisal of the painting has nothing to do with any evaluation of Munkácsy's technical talent.

In my mind, what makes this painting so riveting is the scene it depicts and the unseen, unknown narratives it coaxes forth. When I look it, I am not looking at it from the perspective an art lover or even a common person, but from the viewpoint of a writer. From this viewpoint, I regard it to be as rich and complex as a Dostoevsky novel or as intricate and intertwining as a Dickens epic. In other words, the painting carries its own world as well as the whole world within its frame - it exists as a microcosm that is also a macrocosm.

Plot, setting, character, conflict, symbol, point of view, theme - all elements of fiction are there on the canvas. The only things needed are details. Who is the man? Why has he been condemned? What did he do? Who is the woman holding the child - the one glaring at him so sternly? Is the woman weeping in the corner the man's mother? Are the children his? What is going through the condemned man's mind at that very moment?

And so forth.

The Last Day of a Condemned Man can tell more than a single story, it possesses the power to tell a thousand stories, and that is what I love about it. The depicted scene could provide enough raw material for a dozen five-hundred page novels, each distinct from the other, and leave enough material for a dozen more. Simply put, the subject matter seems inexhaustible. I believe a mere cursory glance at a painting like this could cure even the most stubborn case of writer's block. The Last Day of a Condemned Man is like a never-ending story, which is probably why I like it so much.

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Suddenly I'm Sixteen Again

21/5/2019

When I moved to the United States, I was able to exchange my Canadian driver’s license for an American one with no strings attached and no questions asked. I did the same in reverse after I moved back to Canada from the United States. Shortly after moving to Hungary in 2015, I attempted to exchange my Canadian driver’s license for a Hungarian one and was swiftly informed that it could not be done because Canada had not signed some fiendish agreement known as 1968 Vienna Convention on Road Traffic.

As a result, I was mandated to take both the theoretical and practical driving exams in Hungary if I wished to continue driving here in the long term. I was also told I had exactly one year to fulfil this requirement and that my Canadian license would be considered invalid after 365 days, regardless of its actually date of expiry.

Being the rational and prudent fellow that I am, I responded to this requirement by doing what any rational and prudent person would do in similar circumstances – I decided to delay the whole nightmare until the last possible moment and continue driving in Hungary with my Canadian driver’s license.

When the 365 days were nearly up, I mentioned my driver’s license dilemma to a neighbor, who happens to be a police officer. Following a loud guffaw, my neighbor told me not to worry as no Hungarian cop worth his or her salt would ever bother investigating the 365-day validity of any Hungarian citizen holding a foreign driver’s license.

I interpreted this as both a stroke of luck and a green light, and I surreptitiously pushed back obtaining a Hungarian driver’s license as far as I possibly could. Technically, this means I have been living a criminal life here since 2016, but I have been able to assuage any slight pangs of mild guild and neglected responsibility I have experienced since then by consoling myself with the thought that I am actually a tragic victim a soulless, international bureaucratic technicality.

Victim or not, unfortunately, my gig will soon be up. My Canadian driver’s license expires this summer, and I can only renew it in Canada, which would be both expensive and time-consuming. Thus, after three years of fugitive existence, I have surrendered to authorities here in Hungary and have begun preparing for the theoretical traffic code test as well as the practical driving exam.

Spending an hour or two every day reviewing road signs and driving regulations has been a nostalgic experience. At times, I feel like it’s 1987 again – I am sixteen years old, cramming away at the traffic code, motivated by a strong urge to succeed in what I at the time considered my most important rite of passage. I remember feeling rather anxious and apprehensive during the whole process leading up to test day back then. Oddly enough, I am experiencing similar feelings now despite having more than thirty years of driving experience under my belt.

Of course, at sixteen, my biggest motivating factor for getting a license was the opportunity to take girls out on “real” dates. At forty-seven, my biggest motivating factor is just getting done with it all. I passed my driving tests easily when I sixteen, and I do not anticipate any difficulties this second time around either, but every once in a while I get to wondering how I would respond if I happened to fail the tests now.

The mere thought of such humiliation strikes terror in my soul, and it motivates me to study harder, but there is only so much effort I can dedicate to such a mind-numbing process each day without succumbing to the temptation of taking up alcohol as a hobby. The whole thing has been rather surreal thus far, but I have been able to get a chuckle or two out of it all – and that’s something, I suppose.

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Berdyaev Foresaw the Need for Romantic Christianity As Well

20/5/2019