One simply cannot be human and not have one of five kinds of Resolutions Of Being: a Resolution of Benign Being, a Resolution Of Expectant Being, a Resolution of Parasitic Being, a Resolution Of Predatory Being, or a Resolution Of Symbiotic Being.
Each of these Resolutions represent attempt by humans to repudiate the pervasive debilitating stresses of vulnerability, insecurity, and mortality that comes with being human in a random unforgiving world on a place we call Planet Earth.
All people are motivated to alleviate that stress. The need for solace from anxiety, pain, and fear of our mortality can be so overwhelming that the mere promise of relief, human or otherworldly, can assemble loyal followers to every imaginable cause or ideology. Dependent upon the ground, either fertile or sterile, many Resolutions Of Being can be failed Resolutions Of Being and will not provide relief from anxieties flowing out of the sources of our pain and fears.
A Resolution of Benign Being
Efforts to have a Resolution Of Being can be a simple matter. The classic example of a simple Resolution Of Being is a Resolution Of Benign Being. Whether one calls the origin of Creation, God or by some other name, one can believe that the energy or power responsible for human life requires nothing of humans any more than the origin of creation requires of any other life form.
Advocates of a Resolution Of Benign Being believe human lives are inconsequential in the greater scheme of things. They believe we only have to live our lives as well as we are able to--imposing ill will on no one without cause. Then we die. They reject any notion that the antecedent of our creation keeps an account of the actions in our lives and that the termination of our physical life results in some form of eternal existence. More importantly, eternal existence notwithstanding, they reject any notion that our mortal death requires a reconciliation of our life's product by some Creator-Based standards.
A Resolution Of Expectant Being
For many of the rest of human creations attempts to relieve the pain and fear of being impotent mortals results in a Resolution Of Expectant Being. For the most part it is characterized by the acceptance of any religious, political, philosophical doctrine or a combination thereof that are full of expectations, explanations, and promises that provide some relief from the anxiety our mortality produces in us.
People who choose the religious route claim comfort in their beliefs that their religion and its theological articulations offer accurate descriptions of the behaviors their God expects for them to receive His generosity and goodwill. Mainly, however, they are comfortable in their understanding of what behaviors and beliefs their God expect them to reject and refrain from doing in order to avoid His Wrath.
Whether this group travel the theological road to rewards or the theological road away from punishment they expect substantial relief from the worries, fears, and pain the ubiquitous harsh realities our terrestrial mortality inflicts on us.
Often, however, the religious rules of behavior they embrace are so stringent or self-effacing that habitual devotion to them inflict as much stress as the stresses they seek to avoid. Still, most find it easier to cling to the promises and expectations of even a failing paradigm than it is to seek an alternative.
And when this community of expectant believers encounter intermittent doubt or come up against some failed logic, they resort to faith--believing in that which they can neither prove nor deny. Members who share a kinship in a Resolution Of Expectant Being still suffer from the Anxiety Of Mortal Being even when they retreat to the protective chamber of their faith.
But too many painfully unpleasant and regrettable encounters with life can foster intellectual dissonance. Unfortunately, intellectual dissonance when combined with a succession of repressed disappointment with God, sometimes perforate the walls of their protective chamber of faith. These perforations allow openings for the relentless light of reality and the piercing light of doubt.
A Resolution Of Parasitic Being
When faith is compromise by that light, members of this kinship often suffer emotional responses that nurtures a sorrowful Resolution Of Parasitic Being. Sadly, this is a Resolution Of Being borne of guilt and a desire for pity and compassion. With this resolution they hold God and the rest of humanity responsible for their sorrow and their plight. And any escape from it remains the responsibility or God and the rest of humanity.
A Resolution Of Predatory Being
For a smaller group of flawed or damaged individuals, attempts at a resolution is a Resolution Of Predatory Being. It is characterized by what this group perceives to be a string of moral failures or moral weakness whose principle harvest is a pain that transcends their mortal presence and is buried deep within the immortal souls that defines them.
They are intellectually comfortable with the belief that God exists but are not comfortable with their attempted reconciliations of their supposed relationship with Him. They flounder in the depths of a repressed pain because have no intellectual certainty of behaviors they believe God requires of them. And they have no faith to sustain them.
Members of the kinship of a Resolution Of Predatory Being live with relentless anxiety because of their failure to intimately know the God in which they believe. Left to their own devices, they sink in a confluence of spiritual disharmony and behavioral discord. Thy are reduced to emitting frequent silent pleas or angry demands for God to make them sure of His Existence.
Feeling abandoned by God, disappointed and betrayed by humankind, their failed attempt at a meaningful Resolution Of Being becomes a Resolution of Predatory Being borne of anger and hate. The anger, which is a product of fear and pain often turns to rage against their perception of the source of their pain.
Members of this predatory fellowship of rage frequently attempt to return pain to the God they feel deserted them by inflicting punishment on those who claim God. Or they attempt to receive absolution from their painful rage by inflicting pain and punishment on those who do not claim God as they claim Him.
More often than not, however, they simply choose to inflict pain and punishment on those who ignore them or do not buy into their rage and hate. Inflicting fear, pain, and control over other people makes them feel powerful, even godlike, and vindicated for a while. Then they must do it all over again.
Serial Murders,serial rapists, and other predators of the weak and vulnerable are all products of a failed Resolution Of Being that morphed into a Resolution of Predatory Being. This is a fellowship of tyrants, architects of war and genocide, politicians who steal from the people and the public treasury, and politicians who create policies whose sole purpose is to deprive people of the right to personal dignity, financial security, and the pursuit of a healthy moral happiness.
They have rejected all resolutions of the Communal-I-Am. They have failed every attempted resolution of the Personal-I-Am. When failure to realize freedom from the anxiety of mortality cohabits with an ill-defined or distorted definition of self, the mix is a cancerous elixir for the Pain Of Mortal Being and the Fear Of Eternal Being.
And it is fertile ground for the madness that makes men do the evil men do.
Resolution Of Symbiotic Being