Not that it's very important, but for some reason I was tickled by the notion that people can "protest" or "make a political statement" by carrying an unloaded gun around on their hip.
While reading this SF Gate article on the so called "Open Carry Movement":
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/scavenger/detail?entry_id=51902
a few of potentially disparaging thoughts whirled like a vortex in my highly amused mind.
1. The only "statement" you dudes are making is that there are only two types of people who can walk around with a gun on their hip and not get shot at by the cops: other cops and white people.
Seriously. Everyone else is shot and killed for lying on their belly at a BART station or pulling out a cell phone at dusk, yet these "Open Carry Movement" guys are able to saunter unchallenged through the clearance section at Barnes and Noble with a .45 on their hip. Hmmmmm...
Wait... I get it! That is your statement! Wow! Suburban white guys drawing attention to our society's disparate treatment of people of color by walking around with weapons and acting oppressed...
Satire at its best folks. Man, you guys sure are clever!
2. It also occurred to me that political "movements" are a means of catalyzing or signifying the arrival into the political mainstream of a given, previously unheralded cause of the downtrodden and disenfranchised people. Gay Rights is a movement. Fighting for "Civil Rights" for people of color, labor groups and women was/is a movement. Ending wars that kill untold numbers of innocent people is a movement. Large shifts in mainstream ideals that hold potential benefits for disenfranchised portions of society are political movements.
So let’s take a look at your "movement": You want to carry firearms, and you feel disenfranchised because people disagree with you about that. Well, we’ve been able to carry firearms as a common right since before we abolished slavery, and those who object to it are not worried about your political “preferences” so much as your ability to, hmmm… kill people?
Sorry folks. A bunch of fat suburban car salesmen walking from their condo to Starbucks with a BlackBerry and an unloaded gun on their hip is less a "movement" in the political sense, more so in terms of passing stool.
But what the heck, you guys can have it. Enjoy walking around with your manhood on the outside of our pants.
Hell, you want to carry a gun to "protect yourself"?
Go right ahead! It's clear that the police who stopped you to ask you about the firearm you're brandishing in front of children in a quiet suburban neighborhood aren't doing their job, right? Crime is rampant in Walnut Creek, right? You think you could do it better, right?
Well, by all means.
Go ahead Captain J. Wayne of the Team America Brigade. Shoot 'em up! Because you're judge, jury, and executioner in all matters of the rough and tumble social geography that is Northern California’s suburban jungle. In a ‘hood where chai tea soy lattes come dangerously over heated, where shamefully oaky Cabernets offend your palate with overbearing tannins, and pesky kids run rampant on your lawn as they revel their youthful imaginations, only you have the courage to destroy the evil enemy, whoever they are or whatever they are doing... which you can't articulate at this point in time without sounding racist, but your publicist tells me that you can tell me with absolute certainty that "they" are out there. I know it. You know it. We all know it.
"They" are out there, whoever “they” are.
Seriously though, I got to thinking that maybe holding a gun isn't such a bad thing. It would be great to go gallantly about my town, protecting my loved ones, my neighborhood, my Constitution, my country.
As a matter of fact, since we have the right to carry guns, I'm going to get one. Yeah, that's right; I'm going to walk around with a firearm on my hip.
Better yet, I’ll one-up you "Open Carry" dudes by proudly displaying my firearm in a place where I could, I don't know... actually use the protection!?!?
I've never lived in such a neighborhood, and I don’t know if you guys have either; but I'm pretty sure things go down like this:
The good guys wear white hats, and the bad guys walk around in black hats. The bad guys also wear red and blue bandannas over their face so that they can't be identified, even though it makes it easier for everyone to spot them.
I will valiantly journey to the edge of the neighborhood, the liquor store. Its ramshackle edifice will hover over me like an emblem of unearthly evil. The gum sticking to the sidewalk will remind me of my long lost lover’s embrace – she’s so far from me now. It’s me against the world.
The sidewalk is cold and wet, but I can smell the evil simmering around me, hot and sticky as summer in Larkspur.
As I step around the discarded Frito-Lay packages rolling around my feet like urban tumbleweeds, I'll walk up to a black clad bad guy and say, "Well there stranger. You from 'round here?"
He'll say, in an evil tone, "Actually, yes I am. I live over there.” He’ll point to the church across the street before asking me, “Are you from this area sir? Can’t say I’ve seen you here on Sundays past."
I'll respond with the stank eye as I gesture to my trusty friend.
He'll ask in that wry, evil tone, "Uh, are you sure you want to do that?” Perplexed but unafraid, he’ll match my bravado. Tricky bastard. My gaze of glory will let him know I mean business.
“I mean, I'm just on my way to get more bread so the kids at Bible study can have toast,” he'll stammer, afraid as he rambles on something incoherent like, “But some people around here might feel threatened by your blatant display of violent potential. You might be perceived as a threat to some people’s interests here. Maybe they think you're a cop even. It’s like you’re asking for trouble or something. Have you thought this through?"
"Now wait a minute varmint," I'll reply strongly, brave in the face of evil. "You've got no right to tell me what I can and can't do. Now turn around, pace out ten steps, and damn it pilgrim, you'd better draw before I do. I came here to clean this town. No more black hats 'round here."
"Suit yourself," he'll say as he pushes by me and enters the liquor store. I will then frantically pull ammunition out of my Dale Earnhardt Jr. fanny pack (since, peaceful and law abiding as I am, I'm will not carry a loaded gun or keep ammunition near it. It’s against the law).
When I'm organized, the evil bastard will lurk out from the liquor store hiding pathetically behind an armful of cheap white bread. Doesn’t he know they used bleach flour in that bread? He’s contributing to childhood obesity, that evil prick!
I'll give him one last evil eye as my clip clicks into position. A round enters the chamber. I'll shout my best combination Clint Eastwood, '90s action movie one-liner.
"Lock and load, punk!"
And he will run into the church, no doubt to cower before God and ask for forgiveness! Huzzah! The bad guys are running. Score one for the white hats! Yeeehhaaawww!!!
And as I turn to walk back the other way, a random fifteen year old plants a shank in my back six or seven times. I get one shot off before I hit the ground and bleed to death on the sidewalk.
As I fade to black, I lay with the comfort of a warm gun in my palm, secure in my ignorance of the fact that my desperate, prideful discharge killed a little girl walking home from church on the other side of the street.
So, congrats to all you political spaghetti-westerners out there. I’m with ya.
Keep the movement alive.
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Compare/Contrast Jiddu Krishnamurti to Slavoj Zizek
Jiddu Krishnamurti contrasts with Slavoj Zizek, the man quoted in an earlier post, in too many ways to count. But, somehow, I find parallels in their work. I wonder what you will find?
On one hand, Slavoj Zizek (quoted in the post below this one) is a skittish, hyperactive, psycho-analytical Marxist, even a confessed pseudo-Stalinist, Continental Philosopher. However, he regularly pokes fun at Marxist academics, and he would agree that Marxism as such is essentially dead.
Focusing on ideology, Zizek comments on everything, from international politics to toilets to David Lynch films. He primarily cites:
The late modern Catholic Theologian Chesterton (who says that Christ himself exemplifies atheism while crying out for God on the cross); Hegelian state analysis (State law is justice, de facto); and French psycho-analyst Jaqcues Lacan, who asserted that humans act to fulfill a "Death Drive" (fetishizing immortality while being repulsed by it) and maintain a psychological process called jouissance (a french word best translated to mean "enjoyment" in the context of "orgasm") -- the circular rotation of desires around a central object which is never itself realized or "touched".
Zizek thinks that we cannot escape this feedback loop until we withdraw, devote ourselves to theory, and concoct a new Utopia that is not so reliant on allowing individual enjoyment.
Jiddu Krishnamurti, on the other hand, is a man who is difficult to describe in standard academic jargon, and he would likely appreciate that. While he may agree with Zizek on a few, rather particular aspects of human psychology, he takes a different (not necessarily opposite) perspective on the struggles Zizek analyses to death.
Krishnamurti would be most simply classified as a philosopher... but not really. I appreciate that he is more genuinely described as a sincere, "spiritually" deep thinker. Glad to know there is space in this world for such people.
He didn't like extended conceptual or empirical analyses. Instead, he preferred focusing on the problems inherent to the human experience, not the interaction of consciousness with the object it creates.
He didn't really like being quoted, and he is not easy to quote. But, here goes...
"And when you are so enclosed so bound, can any help reach you? But when you are open, there is unending help in all things, from the song of a bird to the call of a human being, from the blade of grass to the immensity of the heavens. The poison and corruption begin when you look to one person as your authority, your guide, your saviour."
"Interest, curiosity, is the beginning of acquisition, which soon becomes boredom; and the urge to be free from boredom is another form of possession. So the mind goes from boredom to interest to boredom again, till it is utterly weary; and these successive waves of interest and weariness are regarded as existence."
---- Excerpts from the book COMMENTARIES ON LIVING SERIES II
"In the same way if you negate what is not religion then you find out what is true religion; that is, what is the truly religious mind. Belief is not religion, and the authority which the churches, the organized religions assume, is not religion. In that there is all the sense of obedience, conformity, acceptance, the hierarchical approach to life."
"Therefore a religious mind is a mind that is constantly aware, sensitive, attentive, so that it goes beyond itself into a dimension where there is no time at all."
---- TALKS AND DIALOGUES SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA A.B.C. TELEVISION INTERVIEW 20TH NOVEMBER, 1970
"Religion, politics, society are exploiting you, and you are being conditioned by them; you are being forced in a particular direction. You are not human beings; you are mere cogs in a machine. You suffer patiently, submitting to the cruelties of environment, when you, individually, have the possibilities of changing them."
---- 1933-12-30 2nd Public Talk, Adyar, Madras, India
"We are not loved because we don't know how to love. What is love? The word is so loaded and corrupted that I hardly like to use it. Everybody talks of love - every magazine and newspaper and every missionary talks everlastingly of love. I love my country, I love my king, I love some book, I love that mountain, I love pleasure, I love my wife, I love God. Is love an idea? If it is, it can be cultivated, nourished, cherished, pushed around, twisted in any way you like. When you say you love God what does it mean? It means that you love a projection of your own imagination, a projection of yourself clothed in certain forms of respectability according to what you think is noble and holy; so to say, `I love God', is absolute nonsense. When you worship God you are worshipping yourself - and that is not love."
(Skip a paragraph or two)
"Throughout the world, so-called holy men have maintained that to look at a woman is something totally wrong: they say you cannot come near to God if you indulge in sex, therefore they push it aside although they are eaten up with it. But by denying sexuality they put out their eyes and cut out their tongues for they deny the whole beauty of the earth. They have starved their hearts and minds; they are dehydrated human beings; they have banished beauty because beauty is associated with woman."
(Skip a paragraph or two)
"Love is something that is new, fresh, alive. It has no yesterday and no tomorrow. It is beyond the turmoil of thought. It is only the innocent mind which knows what love is, and the innocent mind can live in the world which is not innocent. To find this extraordinary thing which man has sought endlessly through sacrifice, through worship, through relationship, through sex, through every form of pleasure and pain, is only possible when thought comes to understand itself and comes naturally to an end. Then love has no opposite, then love has no conflict. You may ask, `If I find such a love, what happens to my wife, my children, my family? They must have security.' When you put such a question you have never been outside the field of thought, the field of consciousness. When once you have been outside that field you will never ask such a question because then you will know what love is in which there is no thought and therefore no time. You may read this mesmerized and enchanted, but actually to go beyond thought and time - which means going beyond sorrow - is to be aware that there is a different dimension called love. But you don't know how to come to this extraordinary fount - so what do you do? If you don't know what to do, you do nothing, don't you? Absolutely nothing. Then inwardly you are completely silent. Do you understand what that means? It means that you are not seeking, not wanting, not pursuing; there is no centre at all. Then there is love."
--- Quotes on Love, 1980
On one hand, Slavoj Zizek (quoted in the post below this one) is a skittish, hyperactive, psycho-analytical Marxist, even a confessed pseudo-Stalinist, Continental Philosopher. However, he regularly pokes fun at Marxist academics, and he would agree that Marxism as such is essentially dead.
Focusing on ideology, Zizek comments on everything, from international politics to toilets to David Lynch films. He primarily cites:
The late modern Catholic Theologian Chesterton (who says that Christ himself exemplifies atheism while crying out for God on the cross); Hegelian state analysis (State law is justice, de facto); and French psycho-analyst Jaqcues Lacan, who asserted that humans act to fulfill a "Death Drive" (fetishizing immortality while being repulsed by it) and maintain a psychological process called jouissance (a french word best translated to mean "enjoyment" in the context of "orgasm") -- the circular rotation of desires around a central object which is never itself realized or "touched".
Zizek thinks that we cannot escape this feedback loop until we withdraw, devote ourselves to theory, and concoct a new Utopia that is not so reliant on allowing individual enjoyment.
Jiddu Krishnamurti, on the other hand, is a man who is difficult to describe in standard academic jargon, and he would likely appreciate that. While he may agree with Zizek on a few, rather particular aspects of human psychology, he takes a different (not necessarily opposite) perspective on the struggles Zizek analyses to death.
Krishnamurti would be most simply classified as a philosopher... but not really. I appreciate that he is more genuinely described as a sincere, "spiritually" deep thinker. Glad to know there is space in this world for such people.
He didn't like extended conceptual or empirical analyses. Instead, he preferred focusing on the problems inherent to the human experience, not the interaction of consciousness with the object it creates.
He didn't really like being quoted, and he is not easy to quote. But, here goes...
"And when you are so enclosed so bound, can any help reach you? But when you are open, there is unending help in all things, from the song of a bird to the call of a human being, from the blade of grass to the immensity of the heavens. The poison and corruption begin when you look to one person as your authority, your guide, your saviour."
"Interest, curiosity, is the beginning of acquisition, which soon becomes boredom; and the urge to be free from boredom is another form of possession. So the mind goes from boredom to interest to boredom again, till it is utterly weary; and these successive waves of interest and weariness are regarded as existence."
---- Excerpts from the book COMMENTARIES ON LIVING SERIES II
"In the same way if you negate what is not religion then you find out what is true religion; that is, what is the truly religious mind. Belief is not religion, and the authority which the churches, the organized religions assume, is not religion. In that there is all the sense of obedience, conformity, acceptance, the hierarchical approach to life."
"Therefore a religious mind is a mind that is constantly aware, sensitive, attentive, so that it goes beyond itself into a dimension where there is no time at all."
---- TALKS AND DIALOGUES SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA A.B.C. TELEVISION INTERVIEW 20TH NOVEMBER, 1970
"Religion, politics, society are exploiting you, and you are being conditioned by them; you are being forced in a particular direction. You are not human beings; you are mere cogs in a machine. You suffer patiently, submitting to the cruelties of environment, when you, individually, have the possibilities of changing them."
---- 1933-12-30 2nd Public Talk, Adyar, Madras, India
"We are not loved because we don't know how to love. What is love? The word is so loaded and corrupted that I hardly like to use it. Everybody talks of love - every magazine and newspaper and every missionary talks everlastingly of love. I love my country, I love my king, I love some book, I love that mountain, I love pleasure, I love my wife, I love God. Is love an idea? If it is, it can be cultivated, nourished, cherished, pushed around, twisted in any way you like. When you say you love God what does it mean? It means that you love a projection of your own imagination, a projection of yourself clothed in certain forms of respectability according to what you think is noble and holy; so to say, `I love God', is absolute nonsense. When you worship God you are worshipping yourself - and that is not love."
(Skip a paragraph or two)
"Throughout the world, so-called holy men have maintained that to look at a woman is something totally wrong: they say you cannot come near to God if you indulge in sex, therefore they push it aside although they are eaten up with it. But by denying sexuality they put out their eyes and cut out their tongues for they deny the whole beauty of the earth. They have starved their hearts and minds; they are dehydrated human beings; they have banished beauty because beauty is associated with woman."
(Skip a paragraph or two)
"Love is something that is new, fresh, alive. It has no yesterday and no tomorrow. It is beyond the turmoil of thought. It is only the innocent mind which knows what love is, and the innocent mind can live in the world which is not innocent. To find this extraordinary thing which man has sought endlessly through sacrifice, through worship, through relationship, through sex, through every form of pleasure and pain, is only possible when thought comes to understand itself and comes naturally to an end. Then love has no opposite, then love has no conflict. You may ask, `If I find such a love, what happens to my wife, my children, my family? They must have security.' When you put such a question you have never been outside the field of thought, the field of consciousness. When once you have been outside that field you will never ask such a question because then you will know what love is in which there is no thought and therefore no time. You may read this mesmerized and enchanted, but actually to go beyond thought and time - which means going beyond sorrow - is to be aware that there is a different dimension called love. But you don't know how to come to this extraordinary fount - so what do you do? If you don't know what to do, you do nothing, don't you? Absolutely nothing. Then inwardly you are completely silent. Do you understand what that means? It means that you are not seeking, not wanting, not pursuing; there is no centre at all. Then there is love."
--- Quotes on Love, 1980
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Slavoj Zizek Says...
The one measure of true love is: you can insult the other.
---- Slavoj Žižek
The stance of maintaining a proper distance towards the beloved object in order not to disturb its spell is a sure sign of false love: true love is "not afraid to get close", it is a readiness to accept the beloved object in all its common reality and, simultaneously, retain its sublime status...to recognize the rose of the sublime in the cross of everday vulgarity.
---- Zizek, The Sublime Object
Tolerance makes everything boring, we need more conflict!
---- Slavoj Zizek
Niels Bohr said of a superstition: "It works even if you don't believe in it".
---- Slavoj Zizek
Science today effectively does compete with religion, insofar as it serves two properly ideological needs, those for hope and those for censorship, which were traditionally taken care of by religion. [...]
In a curious inversion, religion is one of the possible places from which one can deploy critical doubts about today’s society. It has become one of the sites of resistance.
---- Zizek, Violence.
Step back; [It] enables us to identify a violence that sustains our very efforts to fight violence and promote tolerance: rampant pseudo-urgency.
---- Slavoj Zizek, Violence
...Don’t be - don’t feel guilty for withdrawing from immediate engagement, for trying to understand what’s going on.
---- Slavoj Zizek
Atheists strive to formulate the message of joy which comes not from escaping reality, but from accepting it and creatively finding one’s place in it. What makes this materialist tradition unique is the way it combines the humble awareness that we are not masters of the universe, but just a part of a much larger whole exposed to contingent twists of fate, with a readiness to accept the heavy burden of responsibility for what we make out of our lives.
---- Slavoj Zizek, Violence
---- Slavoj Žižek
The stance of maintaining a proper distance towards the beloved object in order not to disturb its spell is a sure sign of false love: true love is "not afraid to get close", it is a readiness to accept the beloved object in all its common reality and, simultaneously, retain its sublime status...to recognize the rose of the sublime in the cross of everday vulgarity.
---- Zizek, The Sublime Object
Tolerance makes everything boring, we need more conflict!
---- Slavoj Zizek
Niels Bohr said of a superstition: "It works even if you don't believe in it".
---- Slavoj Zizek
Science today effectively does compete with religion, insofar as it serves two properly ideological needs, those for hope and those for censorship, which were traditionally taken care of by religion. [...]
In a curious inversion, religion is one of the possible places from which one can deploy critical doubts about today’s society. It has become one of the sites of resistance.
---- Zizek, Violence.
Step back; [It] enables us to identify a violence that sustains our very efforts to fight violence and promote tolerance: rampant pseudo-urgency.
---- Slavoj Zizek, Violence
...Don’t be - don’t feel guilty for withdrawing from immediate engagement, for trying to understand what’s going on.
---- Slavoj Zizek
Atheists strive to formulate the message of joy which comes not from escaping reality, but from accepting it and creatively finding one’s place in it. What makes this materialist tradition unique is the way it combines the humble awareness that we are not masters of the universe, but just a part of a much larger whole exposed to contingent twists of fate, with a readiness to accept the heavy burden of responsibility for what we make out of our lives.
---- Slavoj Zizek, Violence
Leave God Out of This
Then again, I could do the same... apparently.
Some of you are far touchier than I had expected. Surprising. Again, like I said, it was not my intent to tear your world apart.
I was simply trying to spark a few questions. However, it appears you've already embraced some eloquently opaque prophets who, after examining the problem on terms that can never be addressed, have supplied you with many expressive answers...
Or was that what I was asking you to avoid?
Moving on, it also looks like my last post led some people to believe that I'm in need of mental help.
Well... not quite what I had intended. Sorry. Life is good! Thanks for caring! False alarm folks.
You can relax now. I'll stop shaking those warm, fuzzy boxes of yours.
You're right though. I'm no prophet, and I suppose I ought to avoid breaking them all down if I've no desire to be one.
Just understand that, while it may be your prerogative to identify with whatever higher calling or whatever God you choose, the trappings of these wildly liberating thoughts provoke an extended set of consequences you've likely not considered.
I've exemplified that, if nothing else.
In any event, I have a paper to write. So I'll just pepper this site with some random quotage over the next few weeks. Maybe I'll quote a philosopher or a nutcase psychologist or two. I'll probably also go with the Koran and work my way to the Bible, the Upanishads, and then I'll Wiki some Jainism or Taoism or some artistic stuff. Maybe some Foucault, unless any one of my folks wants to contribute? Some of you had asked before, if I recall correctly. Feel free to stop by.
Later.
Some of you are far touchier than I had expected. Surprising. Again, like I said, it was not my intent to tear your world apart.
I was simply trying to spark a few questions. However, it appears you've already embraced some eloquently opaque prophets who, after examining the problem on terms that can never be addressed, have supplied you with many expressive answers...
Or was that what I was asking you to avoid?
Moving on, it also looks like my last post led some people to believe that I'm in need of mental help.
Well... not quite what I had intended. Sorry. Life is good! Thanks for caring! False alarm folks.
You can relax now. I'll stop shaking those warm, fuzzy boxes of yours.
You're right though. I'm no prophet, and I suppose I ought to avoid breaking them all down if I've no desire to be one.
Just understand that, while it may be your prerogative to identify with whatever higher calling or whatever God you choose, the trappings of these wildly liberating thoughts provoke an extended set of consequences you've likely not considered.
I've exemplified that, if nothing else.
In any event, I have a paper to write. So I'll just pepper this site with some random quotage over the next few weeks. Maybe I'll quote a philosopher or a nutcase psychologist or two. I'll probably also go with the Koran and work my way to the Bible, the Upanishads, and then I'll Wiki some Jainism or Taoism or some artistic stuff. Maybe some Foucault, unless any one of my folks wants to contribute? Some of you had asked before, if I recall correctly. Feel free to stop by.
Later.
Thursday, November 5, 2009
Intro to "Lights Out" Theory
WARNING
If religion is a very touchy subject for you, I must warn you against reading the next few posts. No, I will not be abusive or intentionally disrespectful. Many of my readers are friends or family members. But while I don't like the idea of hurting people, considering the honesty I insist upon when examining this subject, it may be inevitable.
There. I've warned you.
Now, I encourage you to read the following. It may, believe it or not, provide comfort to you. If nothing else, it may prove a testing ground for your faith.
Ahhemm...
Introduction
If you read my last post in its entirety, you would understand that when it comes to death, I am a fan of the Lights Out theory. Literally, Lights Out means that you go nowhere.
That's it.
Done.
Finished.
Dead.
Figuratively, the Lights Out theory may also mean that we simply have no means of shedding light on what happens when we die, at least not beyond the purely speculative theological explanations which emanate from, shall we say, questionable sources.
But aside from the fact that I think you're too happy, why does this even matter? Even if there is no life after death, what's the harm in simply believing in a paradise, a heaven, or reincarnation so long as it helps people get through this life in a generally decent state? Death is a personal issue, right?
Well... not really. This is not simply a personal issue for the very reasons many of you are at this point feeling some level of discomfort. First off, you don’t like the idea of someone else’s actionable notions of death limiting your own perspective and experiences in life. Along these lines, evangelical types are proof positive that attitudes about the proper entrance to a given afterlife are inherently political. I am also evangelical in this sense: what you believe to be the best path to Heaven or Nirvana -- or whatever -- places an onus on everyone else who is living, whether they seek that same paradise or not.
So stop pretending you know where we're headed!
I, for one, am tired of people clinging (yes, in the face of all that science and philosophy have brought us, folks are indeed clinging) to essentially autocratic, theological perspectives that limit rights, limit increased individual and social access to greater human potential, and lead to improper, unjust uses of state power against otherwise innocent people. I am particularly weary of people claiming that conceptions of morality and justice are inherently tied to some notion of a God who's authority emanates from his part in deciding where you are placed in an afterlife.
On this basis I am sorry to conclude that, even if you are a good religious person, as a point of fact, your immortal fantasy harms people directly. Theological notions of an afterlife provide a basis for preventing otherwise intelligent people from realizing a higher degree of their potential human experience, for continuously granting people license to hurt and abuse, and for providing refuge to otherwise despicable, draconian power politicians.
Now, it may be that many people would do horrible things in a world without religion. I agree that this idea is not simply possibly true but nearly impossible to refute. It is also true that religious faith has been a very positive force in reversing oppression, and the practice of valuing education finds its roots in many ancient religious movements, Judaism and Buddhism in particular. However, while a world without a theological basis for notions of immortality and infallibility will certainly not be perfect, a world without religion provides fewer excuses, fewer loopholes for domineering, abusive, oppressive, and ignorant behavior. Most importantly, there are ways to fight oppression and value education that provide less gravity for the ensuing tribalism. Ironically, mine is the theory that leads to fewer negative consequences.
Yes, the Lights Out perspective is a theory. Can't say I've been completely dead before, so I can't really say where we go after we die, or that we don't go anywhere at all. That said, theory is not synonymous with opinion. I resent the idea that Lights Out theory is opinion. It is certainly not based on some notion of what I would like to have happen when I die. Instead, Lights Out theory derives its authority from honest, even dour examinations of what it means to die in light of our (verifiable) reality. If nothing else, it is a theoretical position employable as a means of questioning those who attempt convincing us to misplace our precious faith.
Still, many assert that notions of an afterlife operate entirely on the basis of mere opinion. If a matter of simple opinion, it should be stated that my opinion is still better than competing opinions. Why? Those who have formulated or simply conjured up competing opinions were also not dead when doing so. We are at least equal on these grounds.
From this point, my competitors begin enhancing the validity of my Lights Out theory. While making positive assertions, my competitors provide no valid or consistent reasoning to back up their belief that there is an afterlife, let alone their ostensibly factual account of what it's like or how to get there. Perhaps resulting from their lack of dying, they can give no examples. I on the other hand am not required to provide examples, because I make no such claims.
Further, there is a rather understandable, rather pervasive bias operating amongst my competitors. It is rather easy to see that most people believe in an afterlife, because they just don't want to die. While I've no desire for death, I have discounted my love of life in order to honestly consider this problem. Therefore, it is fair to say that I have done a great deal to dilute this bias where others have not even tried. As I have little or no reason to lie to myself about any of this, I have done a great deal towards preventing myself from giving you false information. I am therefore much less likely to parrot falsehood as truth.
This in mind, I ask that you not confuse my obvious distaste for religion with some similarly mindless worship of “Science and Logic”. This is perhaps the most crucial point of my introduction. Again, I am not trying to say that “Science” with a capital “S” has proven my theory. And while I may use logic and scientific methodology in my own treatment of the issue, I do not think these modes of thought are cure-alls. They are simply the best available salves. I do not wish to hide behind their ever thickening veil of truthiness. Science and Logic are in no way comprehensive methods for addressing the many problems inherent to human consciousness. So please understand that I am not a callous atheist (I prefer non-theological to atheist). I am not a fan of the ivory tower, Richard Dawkins set. My goal is simply this: to clear the table of the many dogmatic, fantastic, theological assumptions currently limiting our individual as well as collective ability to face the notion of an ultimate end.
The notion of an afterlife is the central promise of any religion. Personally, I draw the line for Buddhists when they speak of reincarnation in terms of immortality and literal rebirth. In adopting this notion of an immortal, the notion that there is no death, one crosses the line from philosophy to theology. So central is such a notion of immortality to religion that to believe in a religion without accepting its promise of an afterlife, without its promise of salvation, is to attempt driving a car without an engine; it is to believe you are going somewhere while admitting that, to the best of your knowledge, you clearly are not. Those of us outside the car are not sure where you are trying to go, and we are at a loss when we find your car parked on our front lawn.
We have an engine or two for you to try. Mine has been integral to running the distance our species has covered these last few centuries. My competitors, on the other hand, have sought to park or reverse our course. But my view, the negative, slate clearing act of defiant disbelief, is only half of hard science methodology, and it is only a fraction of the human art. Alone it would be simple nihilism. I must offer something as a substitute, lest you write me off entirely. Please accept that, as a matter of my positive faith, basing an understanding of your mortality on its truly stark terms is the most efficient, cleanest burning fuel for your future vehicle.
In Part 1 of this 4 post series, I will show religious "faith" little respect as I disprove a swath of theological perspectives, especially the silly, impotent notion of "Spirituality". As I have never met or in any way interacted with Gods, I will not attack Gods. I will, however, prove that no one else has ever interacted with a God or "higher power" of any kind. Therefore, I will help you conclude that religions are essentially bare opinion in the order of ridiculous fantasy, and that religious faith offers no authority on any subject, least of all the notion of an afterlife.
In Part 2, I will elaborate on why specific religious positions towards the afterlife are ridiculous and even self-contradictory to the point where they are clearly the result of human psychology.
In Part 3, I will introduce a few brief arguments to show you why I am in fact quite justified in so harshly requesting you update your millennium old social software for a less viral form of actually dealing with life!!!
In Part 4, the real thrust of all this, I will conclude by elaborating on the power of faith. Unlike a Protestant and more like a protester, I will ask that you to cut out the middle men and put faith directly into yourself.
Stay tuned for Part 1: Leave God Out of This
If religion is a very touchy subject for you, I must warn you against reading the next few posts. No, I will not be abusive or intentionally disrespectful. Many of my readers are friends or family members. But while I don't like the idea of hurting people, considering the honesty I insist upon when examining this subject, it may be inevitable.
There. I've warned you.
Now, I encourage you to read the following. It may, believe it or not, provide comfort to you. If nothing else, it may prove a testing ground for your faith.
Ahhemm...
Introduction
If you read my last post in its entirety, you would understand that when it comes to death, I am a fan of the Lights Out theory. Literally, Lights Out means that you go nowhere.
That's it.
Done.
Finished.
Dead.
Figuratively, the Lights Out theory may also mean that we simply have no means of shedding light on what happens when we die, at least not beyond the purely speculative theological explanations which emanate from, shall we say, questionable sources.
But aside from the fact that I think you're too happy, why does this even matter? Even if there is no life after death, what's the harm in simply believing in a paradise, a heaven, or reincarnation so long as it helps people get through this life in a generally decent state? Death is a personal issue, right?
Well... not really. This is not simply a personal issue for the very reasons many of you are at this point feeling some level of discomfort. First off, you don’t like the idea of someone else’s actionable notions of death limiting your own perspective and experiences in life. Along these lines, evangelical types are proof positive that attitudes about the proper entrance to a given afterlife are inherently political. I am also evangelical in this sense: what you believe to be the best path to Heaven or Nirvana -- or whatever -- places an onus on everyone else who is living, whether they seek that same paradise or not.
So stop pretending you know where we're headed!
I, for one, am tired of people clinging (yes, in the face of all that science and philosophy have brought us, folks are indeed clinging) to essentially autocratic, theological perspectives that limit rights, limit increased individual and social access to greater human potential, and lead to improper, unjust uses of state power against otherwise innocent people. I am particularly weary of people claiming that conceptions of morality and justice are inherently tied to some notion of a God who's authority emanates from his part in deciding where you are placed in an afterlife.
On this basis I am sorry to conclude that, even if you are a good religious person, as a point of fact, your immortal fantasy harms people directly. Theological notions of an afterlife provide a basis for preventing otherwise intelligent people from realizing a higher degree of their potential human experience, for continuously granting people license to hurt and abuse, and for providing refuge to otherwise despicable, draconian power politicians.
Now, it may be that many people would do horrible things in a world without religion. I agree that this idea is not simply possibly true but nearly impossible to refute. It is also true that religious faith has been a very positive force in reversing oppression, and the practice of valuing education finds its roots in many ancient religious movements, Judaism and Buddhism in particular. However, while a world without a theological basis for notions of immortality and infallibility will certainly not be perfect, a world without religion provides fewer excuses, fewer loopholes for domineering, abusive, oppressive, and ignorant behavior. Most importantly, there are ways to fight oppression and value education that provide less gravity for the ensuing tribalism. Ironically, mine is the theory that leads to fewer negative consequences.
Yes, the Lights Out perspective is a theory. Can't say I've been completely dead before, so I can't really say where we go after we die, or that we don't go anywhere at all. That said, theory is not synonymous with opinion. I resent the idea that Lights Out theory is opinion. It is certainly not based on some notion of what I would like to have happen when I die. Instead, Lights Out theory derives its authority from honest, even dour examinations of what it means to die in light of our (verifiable) reality. If nothing else, it is a theoretical position employable as a means of questioning those who attempt convincing us to misplace our precious faith.
Still, many assert that notions of an afterlife operate entirely on the basis of mere opinion. If a matter of simple opinion, it should be stated that my opinion is still better than competing opinions. Why? Those who have formulated or simply conjured up competing opinions were also not dead when doing so. We are at least equal on these grounds.
From this point, my competitors begin enhancing the validity of my Lights Out theory. While making positive assertions, my competitors provide no valid or consistent reasoning to back up their belief that there is an afterlife, let alone their ostensibly factual account of what it's like or how to get there. Perhaps resulting from their lack of dying, they can give no examples. I on the other hand am not required to provide examples, because I make no such claims.
Further, there is a rather understandable, rather pervasive bias operating amongst my competitors. It is rather easy to see that most people believe in an afterlife, because they just don't want to die. While I've no desire for death, I have discounted my love of life in order to honestly consider this problem. Therefore, it is fair to say that I have done a great deal to dilute this bias where others have not even tried. As I have little or no reason to lie to myself about any of this, I have done a great deal towards preventing myself from giving you false information. I am therefore much less likely to parrot falsehood as truth.
This in mind, I ask that you not confuse my obvious distaste for religion with some similarly mindless worship of “Science and Logic”. This is perhaps the most crucial point of my introduction. Again, I am not trying to say that “Science” with a capital “S” has proven my theory. And while I may use logic and scientific methodology in my own treatment of the issue, I do not think these modes of thought are cure-alls. They are simply the best available salves. I do not wish to hide behind their ever thickening veil of truthiness. Science and Logic are in no way comprehensive methods for addressing the many problems inherent to human consciousness. So please understand that I am not a callous atheist (I prefer non-theological to atheist). I am not a fan of the ivory tower, Richard Dawkins set. My goal is simply this: to clear the table of the many dogmatic, fantastic, theological assumptions currently limiting our individual as well as collective ability to face the notion of an ultimate end.
The notion of an afterlife is the central promise of any religion. Personally, I draw the line for Buddhists when they speak of reincarnation in terms of immortality and literal rebirth. In adopting this notion of an immortal, the notion that there is no death, one crosses the line from philosophy to theology. So central is such a notion of immortality to religion that to believe in a religion without accepting its promise of an afterlife, without its promise of salvation, is to attempt driving a car without an engine; it is to believe you are going somewhere while admitting that, to the best of your knowledge, you clearly are not. Those of us outside the car are not sure where you are trying to go, and we are at a loss when we find your car parked on our front lawn.
We have an engine or two for you to try. Mine has been integral to running the distance our species has covered these last few centuries. My competitors, on the other hand, have sought to park or reverse our course. But my view, the negative, slate clearing act of defiant disbelief, is only half of hard science methodology, and it is only a fraction of the human art. Alone it would be simple nihilism. I must offer something as a substitute, lest you write me off entirely. Please accept that, as a matter of my positive faith, basing an understanding of your mortality on its truly stark terms is the most efficient, cleanest burning fuel for your future vehicle.
In Part 1 of this 4 post series, I will show religious "faith" little respect as I disprove a swath of theological perspectives, especially the silly, impotent notion of "Spirituality". As I have never met or in any way interacted with Gods, I will not attack Gods. I will, however, prove that no one else has ever interacted with a God or "higher power" of any kind. Therefore, I will help you conclude that religions are essentially bare opinion in the order of ridiculous fantasy, and that religious faith offers no authority on any subject, least of all the notion of an afterlife.
In Part 2, I will elaborate on why specific religious positions towards the afterlife are ridiculous and even self-contradictory to the point where they are clearly the result of human psychology.
In Part 3, I will introduce a few brief arguments to show you why I am in fact quite justified in so harshly requesting you update your millennium old social software for a less viral form of actually dealing with life!!!
In Part 4, the real thrust of all this, I will conclude by elaborating on the power of faith. Unlike a Protestant and more like a protester, I will ask that you to cut out the middle men and put faith directly into yourself.
Stay tuned for Part 1: Leave God Out of This
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Choosing to Look Back
This morning, on my way to work, I contemplated the usual. I thought about being dead.
No, this has nothing to do with the recent Halloweening. Nothing to fear in death, as far as I'm concerned, so there's nothing to celebrate about it either, right? Besides, these days, Halloween has as much to do with the dead as Christmas does with Jeebus.
Are they selling Santa hats yet?
In any event, I choose to look back on death quite often. I began thinking about death on the train this morning as I remembered how I woke up next to my wonderful, beautiful girlfriend. For Pavlovian reasons I will describe below, warming, comforting feelings bring me to thoughts of death. Also, I am now writing this because the Happy Day's blog on the NY Times web site published an article by Clemson U's Todd May on the subject of death(http://happydays.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/02/happy-ending/).
I reflected on this article, and I decided to present my own direction.
If there is some meaning for you to find in my oddly casual attitude about death, it would likely be found amidst my past struggles with the idea of dying. Therefore, for your sake, for the sake of my own evolving relationship with the thought of dying, and for the sake of honing my well established narcissism, I will elaborate on how I've adopted a routine of choosing to look back on death.
Because of the many physical and emotional scars I've been awarded through my lifelong, symbiotic relationship with a diverse range of medical conditions (most of them cardiovascular in nature), I've been in essence forced to consider my demise as a practical matter from very early on. I was therefore, in a sense, robbed of the potential to be naive about death.
While this unfortunate necessity combined with my intellectual greed to forever banish me from the tempting psychological confections displayed in the Pantheonic sweet shop of America's religious glut, it also allowed me to embark on a very painful yet infinitely rewarding process of understanding life as it was. That is to say, while I've come to understand almost nothing about living amongst you all, I've developed a cool, secularized perspective on the notion of leaving this forsaken place. I choose to look back on each new morning as if I've already passed.
Allow me to explain.
By age nine or so, memorable evenings and happy events involuntarily sparked some notion of my inevitable demise. I came to dread wonderful events like birthdays, the first day of summer, the first day of a vacation, or even Christmas morning. Warm happiness inevitably produced a sinking feeling, because I was always afraid I would not wake up to enjoy it again the next day. When I did awaken, I always feared how I would remember the day ahead. I feared that, in death, I would forget it all. And what’s the point in living if you will disregard it all in the end?
Say what you will of this thought process. But when doctors have been telling you that the simple act of running or walking might kill you since you were, uh... let's see... able to hear, the idea of dying from a heart attack at a young age is not so far fetched.
Nonetheless, I once agreed with many of you. I used to think that the above thought process meant I was crazy.
In many ways, I was. I began to overcompensate for my constant dread with a near constant desire for emotional evaporation. I wanted to be alive as a statue is when you look into its eyes, as gone yet as substantially present as when you look away.
To this end, I purposefully developed a hollow point in my psyche by repeating pointless activity. I would do basic things to foster the mutual understanding between myself and others that I was still alive, but at the same time, I avoided acting in ways that mandated feeling much of anything. There was no wrist cutting or pain infliction or anything of that nature, no call for help. As I understood my position, even if help came, the help would eventually die and I would die soon after.
Inevitable death meant that memories themselves brought pain. Why inflict mortal wounds to create painful memories? Why create more scars? Instead, I would stare at the grass outside from my dim living room or the rain from underneath the gutter outside my house. Occasionally I would stand in the rain, just because. I would sometimes open a book and pretend to read, but I would just stare at the pages as if they were white slabs. You see, I never wanted to experience the story. I just wanted to verify that there was still scenery. I wanted context as form, but I feared context as meaning.
From this approach to life, I eventually developed what I thought was an ability to excuse myself from the world. What I developed was a penchant for fantasizing about a world without death or material restraints. I wrote, produced, and directed a number of in-my-head "movies". I lay for hours at night, pretending to sleep while I dreamt of the life I wished would fill my undying days. I developed a means of rewarding myself for this behavior by fantasizing about possessing great powers. Chief among these was my fantasy of achieving immortality.
Of course, even with all this effort, I never really believed this. Living in your head is a generally poor strategy for avoiding painful memories. Certainly, pretending you can't die does not work very well, especially if you are genuinely interested in actually avoiding death. Therefore, in the name of maintaining a social economy through which I could procure sustenance, I would do a lot of overtly obnoxious things to remind myself and others that I was in fact alive, and to ensure that no one would catch on to my (psychotic) plan. I spoke out, I cried a lot, and I hit a girl or two. I had friends of course, but, as they may have been able to tell, I was rarely interacting with them so much as I was interacting with avatar personalities -- their social representatives as displayed by my fantasizing within the loosely controlled environment in my head. Thus, while I was able to interact with people on a relatively normal level, a level that allowed me to simply live, mine was still a world of incredible fantasy.
Looking back, I can see how this result came by design. I wanted to avoid sincere interaction so that I might avoid genuine memories. Again, true interaction scars you. Actual interaction creates actual memories, and the act of remembering reminds you of what has passed. Remembering genuine moments felt to me like death itself, so I avoided them at all costs.
But I did not stay this way. While I wanted to "go away", I wasn't truly interested in disappearing either. The idea of total disappearance was actually my greatest fear. So, by age twelve or thereabouts, I wanted to be counted, but I wanted nothing more than that.
Obviously I could not hope to kill myself. As I saw it, on one end, I could fail in my attempt and be remembered as a nut job or a looser. On the other hand, I might succeed in stellar fashion. Such success would have, in my mind, granted me a degree of fame. If you are alive, fame forces those vivid memories I was avoiding, so I nixed that idea. Then again, what fun is there in being famous while you are dead? Either way, killing yourself to avoid death is a rather stupid idea in the first place. Having realized all this in the span of my tween years, suicide seemed pointless as I entered high school.
So I decided I would try a little harder to live. Life became my new focus. Yet I viewed the future in terms of the inevitable future, death. So instead of living vividly, I remained gray. A stone edifice of my potential, I decided to let others color me as they saw fit.
But how? How does one live with the ever present fear of death and a prevailing absence of theological opiates? First, I tried to be "cool". I worked out a lot, which is fun and exhilarating. But old habits die hard, so I worked out with many fantasies in mind. I was doing something real, but I thought it best to measure my results in light of my perpetual fantasizing.
Oddly enough, it appeared that the physical fulfillment of my fantasies was not allowing any solitude. In high school, as you know, one is not so able to simply disappear, even if you feel like you have. Too many other people are searching to fit in with the scenery, and so the scenery is often the worst place to be when trying to “go away”. Most people are learning form in high school, so context as form becomes the context of meaning I had been trying so hard to avoid as a child.
When my own fantasies failed to achieve for me a state comfortably social anonymity, I compensated by haphazardly picking and choosing from the market place of self imagery. If you are a partially mature adult, you know how that goes. Overall, this method of coping with my life until its ultimate end doesn't work for me.
Next, after it became clear that I was not becoming what I was trying to purchase with barrels of money and hours at the gym, I turned to a few semi-genuine social activities. I say "semi-genuine", because these social experiences were heavily lubricated with substance abuse.
That is to say, I drank my ass off. It was fun! I also smoked my brain into oblivion quite regularly. That was even more fun!!!
We of course know what this type of "fun" can lead to. While I never truly devolved into a cock sucking crack addict, I've had some close calls as a result of my substance abuse. I’ve since resolved to mitigate my use of these substances, but I doubt I will ever completely abandon the use of substances for many, many reasons.
Did I mention it's really, really fun?
But seriously, while this method is a very attractive means of coping with a nihilistic worldview, a frail consciousness may become trapped in it, and the real issue is thus never solved. In examining this cliché, we could also say that the reasons such behavior does not solve the issues I had with death are also the very reasons engaging in it is so attractive: a) you can't remember moments of intense instances of abuse, and b) it stems from and engenders the death wish/immortal fantasy, depending upon which aspect you plan to emphasize while ingesting your substance of choice. Social substance abuse provides a standardized form of social formatting into which many of us may disappear without feeling like it; the drug itself forces a pleasant contextual meaning while "other people" provide context as form.
For a time, substance use proved the perfect salve. Then again, there is a difference between use and abuse. Use is one thing, but I argue that one is not really using a substance unless they are already capable of a more mature frame of mind than I was in. When using a substance, you are enhancing your enjoyment of life or perhaps simply unwinding so that you may work towards a greater goal when the opportunity presents itself. Substance use is a form of self management preformed by a mature human being. Even though I did not die from these drugs or loose a job or even go to jail, I still consider myself to have been abusing these substances. In abusing, one may also enjoy the pleasure of the high, the relaxing and such, but you accomplish nothing. You simply medicate yourself while you wait to die.
This is what I was doing. And so I drank beyond my limit to prove I was invincible, to feel immortal, but also to wallow in misery as I fell towards doom. I smoked to sink into my own body, to fly out of my mind, and thus become amorphous, timeless, immortal form for formless thought.
One particularly timeless moment occurred while I sat alone late at night in the hot tub at my parent's place. They had left town for the weekend, so I decided to unwind a bit. After a few beers and a light toke, I slipped into the soothing water and stared up at the crescent moon. It was wonderful. It was one of those moments I had avoided all of my life. The warm water and the shimmering stars presented a comforting, vivid memory, and nothing in me could stop it. Then I remembered death.
And so I sank into depression.
I asked myself, "Why? What is the point? It is clear that there is no God, no spirits as such, so what of it all? Why am I cursed with making these memories only to forget it all forever? Why must I live so much, only to die?"
The answer erupted from my then empty consciousness, "Because this is what you are doing, and that's because this is what there is for you to do."
"Besides, what else you got going on? You're here and that in and of itself is a reason to live... jackass."
Frank as I am with myself, this was not the end. Figuring out why it is OK to live is one thing. Figuring out what to do with your life is another, and what it all means to you is another thing on top of that.
On these questions, I've few means of advising anyone, at least not before I discuss religion, why it's silly, and what I've come to substitute it with. That's for another post.
But should my rather thin advice on how to treat the thought of your imminent death –- get over it -- cause any dire existential introspection, I've only this odd, similarly thin treatise to offer:
As we've nowhere to look from but the past and present -- the poor yet prolific predictors -- the future is always rich with the memory of fantastic histories.
Seen as the future, as a void of memory bursting with potential histories, living toward tomorrow offers no clear choices except how to die, if you choose to.
Yet, it was never your choice that you will meet death. Thus, death can be seen as the end of choice, the end of you.
You being a choice -- a will to live, to die, or how to go about either -- looking to the future as an ultimate end begets a best case scenario of living towards the given options for dying: to die as this or that, to die in this or that way, or in this or that state.
And yet, the future is arrived at as much from choice as it is from memory, for memories.
Your choices, you, are also memories. Death is then also the end of memories, and living is the process of their reproduction.
In context of form and meaning, choices are what form you, and your memory is your meaning.
Understanding well that you cannot reach the present except as choice and memory, you find that, even as you flail towards the future as choice and memory, you in fact are the past.
Knowing this, and knowing all we can choose of ourselves at present is how we think and feel about the past, look even farther back so that you may again see forward.
Thus, you may see from a point where the future is behind you. Once here, you may safely assume that you are already dead.
While you are not, while there is in fact still a potential for the reproduction of memories, you are now free to ignore your fear of the future as their end, a fear which only results in neglecting your attention to the past.
Understanding your new dominion over history, cultivate your past as you wish it to be remembered.
In all, have no fear of your history or your future. Recall your life as it is, cherish your past, and become its future author as you remember onward.
No, this has nothing to do with the recent Halloweening. Nothing to fear in death, as far as I'm concerned, so there's nothing to celebrate about it either, right? Besides, these days, Halloween has as much to do with the dead as Christmas does with Jeebus.
Are they selling Santa hats yet?
In any event, I choose to look back on death quite often. I began thinking about death on the train this morning as I remembered how I woke up next to my wonderful, beautiful girlfriend. For Pavlovian reasons I will describe below, warming, comforting feelings bring me to thoughts of death. Also, I am now writing this because the Happy Day's blog on the NY Times web site published an article by Clemson U's Todd May on the subject of death(http://happydays.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/02/happy-ending/).
I reflected on this article, and I decided to present my own direction.
If there is some meaning for you to find in my oddly casual attitude about death, it would likely be found amidst my past struggles with the idea of dying. Therefore, for your sake, for the sake of my own evolving relationship with the thought of dying, and for the sake of honing my well established narcissism, I will elaborate on how I've adopted a routine of choosing to look back on death.
Because of the many physical and emotional scars I've been awarded through my lifelong, symbiotic relationship with a diverse range of medical conditions (most of them cardiovascular in nature), I've been in essence forced to consider my demise as a practical matter from very early on. I was therefore, in a sense, robbed of the potential to be naive about death.
While this unfortunate necessity combined with my intellectual greed to forever banish me from the tempting psychological confections displayed in the Pantheonic sweet shop of America's religious glut, it also allowed me to embark on a very painful yet infinitely rewarding process of understanding life as it was. That is to say, while I've come to understand almost nothing about living amongst you all, I've developed a cool, secularized perspective on the notion of leaving this forsaken place. I choose to look back on each new morning as if I've already passed.
Allow me to explain.
By age nine or so, memorable evenings and happy events involuntarily sparked some notion of my inevitable demise. I came to dread wonderful events like birthdays, the first day of summer, the first day of a vacation, or even Christmas morning. Warm happiness inevitably produced a sinking feeling, because I was always afraid I would not wake up to enjoy it again the next day. When I did awaken, I always feared how I would remember the day ahead. I feared that, in death, I would forget it all. And what’s the point in living if you will disregard it all in the end?
Say what you will of this thought process. But when doctors have been telling you that the simple act of running or walking might kill you since you were, uh... let's see... able to hear, the idea of dying from a heart attack at a young age is not so far fetched.
Nonetheless, I once agreed with many of you. I used to think that the above thought process meant I was crazy.
In many ways, I was. I began to overcompensate for my constant dread with a near constant desire for emotional evaporation. I wanted to be alive as a statue is when you look into its eyes, as gone yet as substantially present as when you look away.
To this end, I purposefully developed a hollow point in my psyche by repeating pointless activity. I would do basic things to foster the mutual understanding between myself and others that I was still alive, but at the same time, I avoided acting in ways that mandated feeling much of anything. There was no wrist cutting or pain infliction or anything of that nature, no call for help. As I understood my position, even if help came, the help would eventually die and I would die soon after.
Inevitable death meant that memories themselves brought pain. Why inflict mortal wounds to create painful memories? Why create more scars? Instead, I would stare at the grass outside from my dim living room or the rain from underneath the gutter outside my house. Occasionally I would stand in the rain, just because. I would sometimes open a book and pretend to read, but I would just stare at the pages as if they were white slabs. You see, I never wanted to experience the story. I just wanted to verify that there was still scenery. I wanted context as form, but I feared context as meaning.
From this approach to life, I eventually developed what I thought was an ability to excuse myself from the world. What I developed was a penchant for fantasizing about a world without death or material restraints. I wrote, produced, and directed a number of in-my-head "movies". I lay for hours at night, pretending to sleep while I dreamt of the life I wished would fill my undying days. I developed a means of rewarding myself for this behavior by fantasizing about possessing great powers. Chief among these was my fantasy of achieving immortality.
Of course, even with all this effort, I never really believed this. Living in your head is a generally poor strategy for avoiding painful memories. Certainly, pretending you can't die does not work very well, especially if you are genuinely interested in actually avoiding death. Therefore, in the name of maintaining a social economy through which I could procure sustenance, I would do a lot of overtly obnoxious things to remind myself and others that I was in fact alive, and to ensure that no one would catch on to my (psychotic) plan. I spoke out, I cried a lot, and I hit a girl or two. I had friends of course, but, as they may have been able to tell, I was rarely interacting with them so much as I was interacting with avatar personalities -- their social representatives as displayed by my fantasizing within the loosely controlled environment in my head. Thus, while I was able to interact with people on a relatively normal level, a level that allowed me to simply live, mine was still a world of incredible fantasy.
Looking back, I can see how this result came by design. I wanted to avoid sincere interaction so that I might avoid genuine memories. Again, true interaction scars you. Actual interaction creates actual memories, and the act of remembering reminds you of what has passed. Remembering genuine moments felt to me like death itself, so I avoided them at all costs.
But I did not stay this way. While I wanted to "go away", I wasn't truly interested in disappearing either. The idea of total disappearance was actually my greatest fear. So, by age twelve or thereabouts, I wanted to be counted, but I wanted nothing more than that.
Obviously I could not hope to kill myself. As I saw it, on one end, I could fail in my attempt and be remembered as a nut job or a looser. On the other hand, I might succeed in stellar fashion. Such success would have, in my mind, granted me a degree of fame. If you are alive, fame forces those vivid memories I was avoiding, so I nixed that idea. Then again, what fun is there in being famous while you are dead? Either way, killing yourself to avoid death is a rather stupid idea in the first place. Having realized all this in the span of my tween years, suicide seemed pointless as I entered high school.
So I decided I would try a little harder to live. Life became my new focus. Yet I viewed the future in terms of the inevitable future, death. So instead of living vividly, I remained gray. A stone edifice of my potential, I decided to let others color me as they saw fit.
But how? How does one live with the ever present fear of death and a prevailing absence of theological opiates? First, I tried to be "cool". I worked out a lot, which is fun and exhilarating. But old habits die hard, so I worked out with many fantasies in mind. I was doing something real, but I thought it best to measure my results in light of my perpetual fantasizing.
Oddly enough, it appeared that the physical fulfillment of my fantasies was not allowing any solitude. In high school, as you know, one is not so able to simply disappear, even if you feel like you have. Too many other people are searching to fit in with the scenery, and so the scenery is often the worst place to be when trying to “go away”. Most people are learning form in high school, so context as form becomes the context of meaning I had been trying so hard to avoid as a child.
When my own fantasies failed to achieve for me a state comfortably social anonymity, I compensated by haphazardly picking and choosing from the market place of self imagery. If you are a partially mature adult, you know how that goes. Overall, this method of coping with my life until its ultimate end doesn't work for me.
Next, after it became clear that I was not becoming what I was trying to purchase with barrels of money and hours at the gym, I turned to a few semi-genuine social activities. I say "semi-genuine", because these social experiences were heavily lubricated with substance abuse.
That is to say, I drank my ass off. It was fun! I also smoked my brain into oblivion quite regularly. That was even more fun!!!
We of course know what this type of "fun" can lead to. While I never truly devolved into a cock sucking crack addict, I've had some close calls as a result of my substance abuse. I’ve since resolved to mitigate my use of these substances, but I doubt I will ever completely abandon the use of substances for many, many reasons.
Did I mention it's really, really fun?
But seriously, while this method is a very attractive means of coping with a nihilistic worldview, a frail consciousness may become trapped in it, and the real issue is thus never solved. In examining this cliché, we could also say that the reasons such behavior does not solve the issues I had with death are also the very reasons engaging in it is so attractive: a) you can't remember moments of intense instances of abuse, and b) it stems from and engenders the death wish/immortal fantasy, depending upon which aspect you plan to emphasize while ingesting your substance of choice. Social substance abuse provides a standardized form of social formatting into which many of us may disappear without feeling like it; the drug itself forces a pleasant contextual meaning while "other people" provide context as form.
For a time, substance use proved the perfect salve. Then again, there is a difference between use and abuse. Use is one thing, but I argue that one is not really using a substance unless they are already capable of a more mature frame of mind than I was in. When using a substance, you are enhancing your enjoyment of life or perhaps simply unwinding so that you may work towards a greater goal when the opportunity presents itself. Substance use is a form of self management preformed by a mature human being. Even though I did not die from these drugs or loose a job or even go to jail, I still consider myself to have been abusing these substances. In abusing, one may also enjoy the pleasure of the high, the relaxing and such, but you accomplish nothing. You simply medicate yourself while you wait to die.
This is what I was doing. And so I drank beyond my limit to prove I was invincible, to feel immortal, but also to wallow in misery as I fell towards doom. I smoked to sink into my own body, to fly out of my mind, and thus become amorphous, timeless, immortal form for formless thought.
One particularly timeless moment occurred while I sat alone late at night in the hot tub at my parent's place. They had left town for the weekend, so I decided to unwind a bit. After a few beers and a light toke, I slipped into the soothing water and stared up at the crescent moon. It was wonderful. It was one of those moments I had avoided all of my life. The warm water and the shimmering stars presented a comforting, vivid memory, and nothing in me could stop it. Then I remembered death.
And so I sank into depression.
I asked myself, "Why? What is the point? It is clear that there is no God, no spirits as such, so what of it all? Why am I cursed with making these memories only to forget it all forever? Why must I live so much, only to die?"
The answer erupted from my then empty consciousness, "Because this is what you are doing, and that's because this is what there is for you to do."
"Besides, what else you got going on? You're here and that in and of itself is a reason to live... jackass."
Frank as I am with myself, this was not the end. Figuring out why it is OK to live is one thing. Figuring out what to do with your life is another, and what it all means to you is another thing on top of that.
On these questions, I've few means of advising anyone, at least not before I discuss religion, why it's silly, and what I've come to substitute it with. That's for another post.
But should my rather thin advice on how to treat the thought of your imminent death –- get over it -- cause any dire existential introspection, I've only this odd, similarly thin treatise to offer:
As we've nowhere to look from but the past and present -- the poor yet prolific predictors -- the future is always rich with the memory of fantastic histories.
Seen as the future, as a void of memory bursting with potential histories, living toward tomorrow offers no clear choices except how to die, if you choose to.
Yet, it was never your choice that you will meet death. Thus, death can be seen as the end of choice, the end of you.
You being a choice -- a will to live, to die, or how to go about either -- looking to the future as an ultimate end begets a best case scenario of living towards the given options for dying: to die as this or that, to die in this or that way, or in this or that state.
And yet, the future is arrived at as much from choice as it is from memory, for memories.
Your choices, you, are also memories. Death is then also the end of memories, and living is the process of their reproduction.
In context of form and meaning, choices are what form you, and your memory is your meaning.
Understanding well that you cannot reach the present except as choice and memory, you find that, even as you flail towards the future as choice and memory, you in fact are the past.
Knowing this, and knowing all we can choose of ourselves at present is how we think and feel about the past, look even farther back so that you may again see forward.
Thus, you may see from a point where the future is behind you. Once here, you may safely assume that you are already dead.
While you are not, while there is in fact still a potential for the reproduction of memories, you are now free to ignore your fear of the future as their end, a fear which only results in neglecting your attention to the past.
Understanding your new dominion over history, cultivate your past as you wish it to be remembered.
In all, have no fear of your history or your future. Recall your life as it is, cherish your past, and become its future author as you remember onward.
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