Cheney as the False Solitude (writings of Thomas Merton)

[Annces]

I was reading some of Thomas Merton’s book – No Man is an Island, and came across his description or differentiation between two types of solitude. One is the true solitude and the other is the false solitude. In reading it, it seemed like a perfect description for Dick Cheney.


Briefly, the True solitude “separates one man from the rest in order that he may freely develop the good that is his own, and then fulfill his true destiny by putting himself at the service of everyone else.”

Here is the false solitude.

“False solitude separates a man from his brothers in such a way that he can no longer effectively given them anything or receive anything from them in his own spirit. It establishes him in a state of indigence, misery, blindness, torment and despair. Maddened by his own insufficiency, the proud man shamelessly seizes upon satisfactions and possessions that are not due to him, that can never satisfy him and that he will never really need. Because he has never learned to distinguish what is really his, he desperately seeks to possess what can never belong to him.”

Then Merton goes on to say –
“When the Lord, in His justice, wills to manifest and punish the sins of a society that ignores the natural law, He allows it to fall into the hands of men like this. The proud solitary is the ideal dictator, turning the whole world from peace to war, carrying out the work of destruction, opening the mouths of ruin from city to city, that these may declare the emptiness and degradation of men without God.”


If our country is now in the hands of people who desire destruction, then perhaps it is connected overall with how we are acting as a people, in not obeying natural laws, in polluting the earth, taking more than we give.