The Jordan and the Styx

If time flows, if only in our popular understanding of it - then we are all caught, apparently in rivers, taking us...
Rivers that are mythological - and figurative.
rivers that clearly come in two forms.

First there are rivers such as the Jordan - or Rubicon - rivers that form a boundary one has striven towards, rivers that when one crosses everything is meant to change.
Such rivers essentially mark the end of a quest - where everything all of life in some form or other was resolved into a single (if sometimes complex task). the Charasmatic forces of the wor(l)d cry -just do this and it will all be OK - just get here, or just think that. and the world will be a better place: Reach this gaol we cry and everything really ought to change its form and nature.
The river marks then the boundary- the moment one grows up or enters the community of ones equal - for which as often as not read, the moment that one stops being of interest to everyone else-one becomes merely a member of the club, and not somehow special or to be supported. It is the moment then one is simply dropped by the world - or becomes like everyone else.
We in the west ram democracy as the pancea, the on size is all solution down the throats of other nations. democratize and you will be like us, we cry - for it is reason and the end of history. a ludicrous vainglorious viewpoint we strut at each other.
the result of course being that counties with widely different traditions, histories local customs, takes on authority are knocked into the simple single nation-sate as democracy take of reality. Countries then that have no reason beyond colonial accident to exist, are then treated in the same way as countries with thousands of years of history- all are meant to conform and democratize.
And when things go wrong - as external Gods have a habit of doing hen the chosen folk dissapprove, we blame them; we do not then blame ourselves or the idiocy or arrogance of what we are trying to do - we blame them - with our one size fits all principle. We make then our aid depend of moves our way - so that charity becomes merely another pulling the journey.
A journey with what goal? Once the democracy appears to exist, we do not really care (we do not allow ourselves the position to care). the system can be then hopelessly corrupt, or the province of big oligarchies (which is the case with us anyway near enough) - or whatever.
More than that by democracy we mean of course that we have the right, or our countries do to pry open other sates, to force them to behave, and to ell their resources,or regulate their currency as we want. by democracy we meant then the sate is opened to our particualiar incarnation of tenchology-capitalism-oligarchy arrangement. we want then to give them milk and homey, but only on own own terms....
Democracy marks then the watershed- democratize we scream at other areas of the world, so that we may then 'share' with you what we have. a sharing which always risks us simply going into the open society and rodgering them good and proper. a process which our worthy talk of democracy, and the quest for freedom effectively ignores.
We send others on a quest to find the(our) selves, and then reward them with possession.
The jordan - the promised land - creates then a quest for a single goal- that is always rather different once one has crossed it,and never as simple as one would like. it creates then a single history and a thread to create a new(ish) type of colanalism within.


The styx by contrast is a river, which seals of a kingdom, making it different and singular. The kingdom of the dead - a closed land form which their is no returning once one is there - in which all is caught.
What else is modern politics
One gets elected and it feels like a great right of passage- a moment that everything can change should change- one crosses the styx, which is a mightier river than the Jordan. and then what happens?
One is sealed within the limited kingdom of the dead- and can only do 'dead' things. That is everything en does is judged by the rules and logic of the system, the land in which one now is.
One started a missionary from the land of sense and yet to yield power in a world of checks and balances one becomes a politician, and only able to do political things (and nothing more).
Alternatively in the name of freedom and limiting the power of government, one performs a massive power grab and destroys local democracy.
one always does what one doe not want- a s the dead make one own ideas live in them differntly from how one oneself might wish. Ones power- what one does the ceases to be anything one controls- in the dead's games of chinese whispers - in their muttering in the dark. To have crosses the styx, is to have one policies enacted by ghouls, who are dead to ones own idea, and yet apparently free to use the ideas and spout the language one uses, in their own way.
More than that what will be eventually judged by posterity by the Gods or Minos or whoever, not by ones own dreams but rather through the effect of these ghouls and zombies- it is their action that leads to ones judgement, and not ones hopes and dream. One becomes then the king of the dead for a while - and ones one life after death is defines in and through that kingship and never by the quality of ones own soul (however strongly one wants that to be the case). To be a good leader is then to be able to ride the twisted muttering of the dead - to apparent easy success. It ceases in any sense o be anything personal and useful.
it ceases then to be anything a living monarch can own or request.
ons real power then is lost with life, on the other side of the styx.

Two rivers of time the sweep us all along- and up up in tense we have no control over - and powers we do not want or need...