Over the past year or two I've been having a mild existential-religious crisis. It doesn't really prevail over my state of mind but occasionally I'll get to thinking and go, "fuck, what's the point?"
Seriously. I mean, if there really is no universal arbiter of justice to whom I must answer to after I die, why not just blow my brains out now? If everything is subjective, there can't be a God, right? And the only thing my death will affect is the people that know me, and they'll eventually die too. So why not? The only reason not to is to keep on because I'm enjoying myself. Any other reason appeals to something supernatural.
So what happens if I'm not enjoying myself? Things are fine right now, even good, but what if they weren't?
There's no reason to slog through bullshit if you're going to live 70 years of bullshit and die anyway. Why should I have to subscribe to everyone else's state of mind? As a social being born into a society, I have no choice, ultimately, on how I think. Sure I can decide to buy the brown shirt instead of the grey shirt. Maybe I decide I like Jon but dislike Mark. Maybe I even get to decide what my career will be and if or who I marry. But I don't get to decide whether or not I want to be a part of this society. I don't get to decide if this whole "money" concept really isn't working for me. I don't get to decide not to have a career at all and would rather walk around and look at things for the next 40 years. I don't get to decide that Western economics is oligarchic, undemocratic, and inhumane. I don't get to decide that because George Bush thinks its a good idea to invade Iraq that he should be removed from power. I don't get to decide that Walmart is an evil corporation and should be disbanded. I don't get to decide that green economics make more sense and should be adopted. I don't get to decide that the United States really needs a fall from "grace". I don't get to decide that Bob Goodenow should be fired, the NHLPA caves, and the goddamn hockey season starts. I don't get to decide that I would rather not pay taxes. I don't get to decide that TVs should all be dismantled. I don't get to decide that advertising is immoral and should be illegal. And so on.
I don't have control over any of that. When I think about it that way the fact that I get to decide to buy a brown shirt instead of a grey shirt means fuck all.
And when these winds of existential despair are prevailing over me, there's one overwhelmingly easy answer to all these questions. It's easy, it's comforting, and it makes sense (kinda). The answer is that there's a God who loves you, and that there's a better world waiting after this one.
Unfortunately that just doesn't work for me. I just don't know if I can ever believe that, no matter how tempting it sounds.
Maybe it's too many years of philosophy classes and too many essays written on why God simply cannot exist as we have plausited him (I think I made up a word and I like it). I mean there are loads of cogent arguments that lead a rational thinker to go, "well, that kind of God just doesn't make sense". You come to a point where logic fails to leave a place for God, and if you confine yourself to rational thought (as I do), you have to conclude that God doesn't (can't) exist.
Shit, eh?
Yeah, I'm aware of Kant's argument that God exists once we reach these limits of human thought. Every time the light from our exploratory torches can reach no further into the cave, God exists just past that point. That's a pretty sexy argument and I think it's something I could get in line with. But that doesn't seem to be the kind of God that Mary-Jo-Beth comes to my door and wants to tell me about. I don't even know what that kind of God would be like. Can you talk to Kant's God? Does that God have a spot for me in some kind of afterlife world that hopefully sucks less than this one? Or is that God just a metaphor for these limits to our understanding? Is it just our dualistic thought process which is saying that because we are imperfect beings, there must be a perfect being? Is it our natural tendency to subscribe design and purpose to things we don't understand? Just because there's a limit to what we can understand doesn't mean that something exists beyond that limit, and it certainly doesn't imply that what exists beyond that limit is some kind of praeter-intelligent divinity. Again it's an appeal to objectivity, right? That if there is a spectrum of understanding, there exists an endpoint on that spectrum and that endpoint is deity intelligence? Or that endpoint is the spot where there is divinity? I'm not so sure. Everything is subjective, right? Just because there is "imperfect" doesn't imply the existence of perfection.
Since Plato was writing 2500 years ago we've continually been moving away from absolutes and more and more into uncertainties and vagueness. Why is that? As we get smarter and "smarter" do we have to realize more and more we're evermore alone? Not a very comforting thought.
So what do I do?
Seriously. I mean, if there really is no universal arbiter of justice to whom I must answer to after I die, why not just blow my brains out now? If everything is subjective, there can't be a God, right? And the only thing my death will affect is the people that know me, and they'll eventually die too. So why not? The only reason not to is to keep on because I'm enjoying myself. Any other reason appeals to something supernatural.
So what happens if I'm not enjoying myself? Things are fine right now, even good, but what if they weren't?
There's no reason to slog through bullshit if you're going to live 70 years of bullshit and die anyway. Why should I have to subscribe to everyone else's state of mind? As a social being born into a society, I have no choice, ultimately, on how I think. Sure I can decide to buy the brown shirt instead of the grey shirt. Maybe I decide I like Jon but dislike Mark. Maybe I even get to decide what my career will be and if or who I marry. But I don't get to decide whether or not I want to be a part of this society. I don't get to decide if this whole "money" concept really isn't working for me. I don't get to decide not to have a career at all and would rather walk around and look at things for the next 40 years. I don't get to decide that Western economics is oligarchic, undemocratic, and inhumane. I don't get to decide that because George Bush thinks its a good idea to invade Iraq that he should be removed from power. I don't get to decide that Walmart is an evil corporation and should be disbanded. I don't get to decide that green economics make more sense and should be adopted. I don't get to decide that the United States really needs a fall from "grace". I don't get to decide that Bob Goodenow should be fired, the NHLPA caves, and the goddamn hockey season starts. I don't get to decide that I would rather not pay taxes. I don't get to decide that TVs should all be dismantled. I don't get to decide that advertising is immoral and should be illegal. And so on.
I don't have control over any of that. When I think about it that way the fact that I get to decide to buy a brown shirt instead of a grey shirt means fuck all.
And when these winds of existential despair are prevailing over me, there's one overwhelmingly easy answer to all these questions. It's easy, it's comforting, and it makes sense (kinda). The answer is that there's a God who loves you, and that there's a better world waiting after this one.
Unfortunately that just doesn't work for me. I just don't know if I can ever believe that, no matter how tempting it sounds.
Maybe it's too many years of philosophy classes and too many essays written on why God simply cannot exist as we have plausited him (I think I made up a word and I like it). I mean there are loads of cogent arguments that lead a rational thinker to go, "well, that kind of God just doesn't make sense". You come to a point where logic fails to leave a place for God, and if you confine yourself to rational thought (as I do), you have to conclude that God doesn't (can't) exist.
Shit, eh?
Yeah, I'm aware of Kant's argument that God exists once we reach these limits of human thought. Every time the light from our exploratory torches can reach no further into the cave, God exists just past that point. That's a pretty sexy argument and I think it's something I could get in line with. But that doesn't seem to be the kind of God that Mary-Jo-Beth comes to my door and wants to tell me about. I don't even know what that kind of God would be like. Can you talk to Kant's God? Does that God have a spot for me in some kind of afterlife world that hopefully sucks less than this one? Or is that God just a metaphor for these limits to our understanding? Is it just our dualistic thought process which is saying that because we are imperfect beings, there must be a perfect being? Is it our natural tendency to subscribe design and purpose to things we don't understand? Just because there's a limit to what we can understand doesn't mean that something exists beyond that limit, and it certainly doesn't imply that what exists beyond that limit is some kind of praeter-intelligent divinity. Again it's an appeal to objectivity, right? That if there is a spectrum of understanding, there exists an endpoint on that spectrum and that endpoint is deity intelligence? Or that endpoint is the spot where there is divinity? I'm not so sure. Everything is subjective, right? Just because there is "imperfect" doesn't imply the existence of perfection.
Since Plato was writing 2500 years ago we've continually been moving away from absolutes and more and more into uncertainties and vagueness. Why is that? As we get smarter and "smarter" do we have to realize more and more we're evermore alone? Not a very comforting thought.
So what do I do?
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To be honest, it seems better to me to have an eternity mapped out for me than to have my short life here mapped out for me and that's all I get. If you take the purpose of civilization to be a betterment for its members -- i.e. people settle together for protection and other mutual benefits -- then I think it's outlived itself in that regard. We slave, figuratively, to support this massive framework of society and really our only benefit from that is the benefit of being alive. You ARE being judged by something with infinite authority: society. You are judged based on your credit history, whether or not you're paying taxes, and your worth to everybody else, as well as numerous other more superficial things like how you look and how you act. You make decisions based on your own beliefs? Are you sure? And where did those beliefs come from? Once again, they came from society. There's so many things you "believe" in that you don't even realize that to say you choose your own beliefs and how to act on them is incoherent.
Sure, you can choose to believe that, say, eating meat is wrong once you've been presented with evidence to suggest that. But you didn't choose to believe that there is such a thing as "capital" and that things have intrinsic "value", and that value is represented by money and the amount of value is set by this framework called the free market. Or it's set by a command economy. Or, it's set by how much boar meat someone will trade you for the spears you made. We are dialectical thinkers; if we reject the idea that things have value, we can only do so in relation to the concept that things have value. If you wanted to outline some kind of new society where capital and money didn't exist, you'd start with "this is how things would be different" -- the key word is different. You'll never escape that fundamental belief that you had and that you act on thousands of times a day without even realizing it.
My original post was about whether or not the ability to "choose your own beliefs" is even a benefit at all. Is it even a good thing to be here? Is that really a benefit? Or is it just a life of work and debt with no point? Am I an ox yoked to plow a field, and in exchange I get food and a place to eat? So what, right? Just because we can talk abstractly about things like value and beliefs doesn't necessarily mean there's any more value in our lives than an ox that plows a field to fuel our civilization (certainly not its).
It seems to me that the only way to derive value (there's that word again) from existence is to believe that there is some point to it all. What point is there? Well, some say the point is to be happy. Some say it is to be productive. Some say the point is to contribute to humanity. some say the point is to lead a good life because there's an afterlife waiting for you that will be much, much better.
Some say there's no point at all.
Which is it? I have no idea. I'd like to know.
What I do know, or what I think I do know, is that if there was some point to it all, some sort of karmic balance in the end that repaid me for this existence, that would be a hell of a lot better than there not being one. Maybe. Definitely maybe. But as I sit here on a sunday afternoon biding time until I go eat some food (because, ya know, ya gotta) at my parents house, I might as well talk about this. What are my other options?