Sam's profileSam's spacePhotosBlogListsMore  |  Tools Help |
|
Sam's spaceA man immortal 'til the day he died... July 21 what happens when my two remaining synapses meet...Right will never conquer might. Might is too strong. Islam will never take over the world. There are too many Jews and too many Hindus for that to ever happen. Gentle Jesus meek and mild will never inherit the earth. There are too many atheists who will never convert. Buddha will never be top dog. He is too serene to fight for that position. Neither the right wing nut jobs nor the left wing looney tunes will ever successfully revolutionize the U.S.A. There will always be too many unpatriotic, godless, America-hating, tree-huggers brainwashed by the liberal media, and too many abortion doctor-killing, war-mongering, family value-pandering, homophobic, cold-hearted fascists brainwashed by the conservative media, for any kind of real change to occur in this country. Adam and Eve will just have to make room for Adam and Steve and Bertha and Genevieve, because gays and lesbians are here to stay, and all of the puritanical repression in the world ain't gonna stop them. Religion will never really die, because people need their illusions to stay sane and un-suicidal. Science will never triumph over superstition, because people will always prefer their fancies over the facts. There will never be peace in the Middle East, until people recognize that the entire universe is holy, and not just Israel. Global warming will happen, no matter what we do, and then global cooling will happen some time after that, no matter what we do. Someday, this planet will not be fit for humans, no matter what we do. You will never win the lottery. You will never find the perfect mate. You will never sit at the right hand of the Lord. In thirty billion years, nothing will remain of this once thriving universe but an endless expanse of cold black gas and dust. No stars, no planets, no galaxies, no evidence of intelligent life. It will seem as if everything that ever was had never been. Have a nice day. August 07 Total Strangers I HateA few years ago, I was experiencing severe toothaches where the simple act of chewing would send agonizing pains shooting through my neck, my jaw, my teeth, and my skull. In this fucked up macho-driven world, it is a sorry thing for a man to admit he's in pain, especially in front of women, who do not esteem him for his honesty but feel nothing but contempt, even if they feign pity. Since I could not see the dentist until Monday, I endured these pains for a few days, seriously contemplating a bullet in my brain to end the suffering. Suicide was out of the question, so I took pain killers to ease the situation. I have met some sympathetic gentle dentists in my life, a few that were not judgmental sadistic self-righteous pieces of cowshit, but the nice ones were few and far between. I popped a piece of gum in my mouth so I wouldn't inflict my bad breath on anyone in the dentist office, and chewed on the other side of my mouth to avoid the screaming pains. Without complaining, without whining, desperately attempting a stoic facade, I merely explained the situation to the dental assistant, who glibly and smugly remarked that I was chewing gum. Her implication: my pain was bullshit, I was wasting her time, I am a big fat baby. I have experienced scores of situations just like this one, where a total stranger gets in my face, unprovoked, for absolutely no reason. I have no idea what kind of life such a person has led to treat me this way, I have no idea if there is something particular about me that has made them single me out, I have no idea if under other circumastances they may be perfectly decent people, and this is simply an anomaly. My typical reaction is to be stunned, too surprised to properly defend myself. I merely pointed out matter of factly that I was using the other side of the mouth to chew the gum. I didn't mention the pain killers I was taking. Sadly, there are laws against assault and battery. Even more tragically, society frowns upon a man who hits a woman, even when that woman has viciously undercut the tenuous remains of his masculinity. I should have stared her down and said nothing. I should have stared her down and waited for an apology, and I should have complained loudly at the front desk until I got myself another dental assistant. If you are in the health care industry, you have two choices. Be sympathetic, or shut the fuck up.
I have already written about the worst dentist in the history of dentistry in another blog. His wife was as sweet and gentle as a person could possibly be. He was a sadistic asshole who humiliated me and then tortured me. If I had the courage to fire six shots into his extremities--one in each arm, one in each leg, one in each hand, and one in each foot--I would do so and gladly accept the consequences. "How does it feel, fuckface? How does it feel?"
I could go on an on, I could write page after page of resentful bullshit, reliving past humiliations. That's why I stupidly turned my computer on this morning, because I was unable to concentrate on anything productive. So I stupidly go over these inconsequential bullshit situations because I was too cowardly to take matters into my own hands ages ago. How completely pathetic, to live this comfortable bourgeois life when I could have been truly authentic years ago. If you want to be real, don't turn the other cheek.
June 17 Atheist AlmightyIf God ever takes a vacation and puts me in charge for a while, here are a few changes I would make in the world.
People would still have free will, but I wouldn't be so laissez-faire, which is to say, non-existent.
I would turn all guns into pogo sticks, and all bullets into jelly beans. If you eat too many jelly beans, you can work off the extra calories on your pogo stick.
If you don't care for jelly beans, you can help yourself to a tuna sandwich.
Every time someone pushes a button to fire a deadly missile, a jet of water will squirt in their faces. This would be a nice gentle reminder that firing missiles is naughty.
All those huge metal tanks would be turned into plastic and shrunk down so kids could play with them. They can still play with them as adults, since there won't be any real tanks to kill people.
Anyone who wants to stab another person will certainly have free will to pick up a knife and try to kill their intended victim, but as soon as they try, but I will create an invisible shield to protect my earthly children, every single one of them, all 6 billion, and they will be safe.
Anyone who tries to do anything more than hug you or kiss you or cuddle you or give you gentle nuggies will be immediately tickled by me in their most vulnerable spot.
So you better not try to stick a shiv into anyone, or I will tickle you.
After a while, people won't be able to hurt you except by calling you names, and then you can say "sticks and stones will break my bones" and then everyone will get tired of being meanies.
I will free all non-violent offenders from prison. I will read the minds of everyone on death row and free all unfairly convicted innocent people.
All destructive hurricanes will be turned into gentle rains. Gentle rains get the job done just as well.
All tsunamis will be redirected toward Malibu and turned into gnarly waves for surfer boys and surfer girls.
I will write a really good Bible, with fascinating provocative stories. No boring lists, no ridiculous rules, no moral atrocities, no hateful propaganda. Anyone who refuses to read my Bible gets tickled.
I will cure AIDS and cancer immediately, forthwith, and forevermore.
Every disease which brings nothing but suffering will be jettisoned, never to return.
I will feed every single one of my children, and give them clothing to wear, books to read, decent teachers to enlighten their minds, and decent parents to love them unconditionally.
I am the Lord thy God. I will have no other Gods before me. If you worship another God, I won't invite you to my birthday party. So there.
There will be no more drought or starvation. We really don't need anymore of that. I really don't know why God invented drought and starvation.
Everybody can live to the age of 150 if they like, and enjoy good health. Death won't be terrifying anymore. It will be like a peaceful retirement at the end of a long happy life.
With all of the prosperity and all of the trillions of dollars saved because war is a thing of the past, people can afford to make better rockets and space stations. When Earth gets too crowded, people can live on Mars, which will overflow with milk and honey.
Evil people in power will come down with terrible explosive diarrhea. Every time they exercise their free will in order to cheat or lie or kill, I will exercise my free will and give them explosive diarrhea. Soon enough, they will learn how to be nice again.
Eventually, governments and politicians and policemen and soldiers will become a thing of the past. People will get along fine, if only to avoid getting tickled or Montezuma's revenge.
All adolescent girls and boys will no longer get pimples. I hereby abolish pimples.
Any child who wants a puppy and a kitten, gets a puppy and a kitten. But you have to play with your pets, and feed them every day.
I won't take any interest in the Superbowl. You quarterbacks can pray for victory all you want, but it won't help. Only skill and talent can come to your aid, because I am just watching for the commercials.
Don't bother praying at all, in church or anywhere else. Use your extra time reading a book or writing a poem or taking a long walk. I already know that you want good health, a cool car, a nice home, someone to love, inner peace, an enjoyable career, and a pleasant neighborhood to raise your children in, so you really don't need to pray anymore. Fear not; I already have your backs.
I am omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, and omnibenevolent, after all.
It's been a few years since I read the unholy bible all the way through, so I honestly don't recall if the phrase "free will" is ever used by god's holy ghost writers. I just happened to see the first half hour of Bruce Almighty, and it really astounded me when Morgan Freeman tells Jim Carrey that he cannot toy with free will. How truly ridiculous. I believe that the concept was invented out of a kind of desperation to explain god's silence and inactivity since fictional bible times. How nice of god to give us humans the gift of free will, pseudo-religious people say, because he didn't want us to be robots. Nonsense. Look at both old and new testaments, where god is active, visible, tangible, speaking to people, appearing as a burning bush or a pillar of smoke, where he lays down the most ridiculous rules covering significant and trivial behavior, where he punishes infractions not in the next life but in this one, where he preaches and teaches and heals the sick. So where has this god been for the last 2,000 years or so? Pseudo-religious people claim that god is still with us, everywhere, in complete control of our lives. I see no evidence of this at all. I think the notion of free will came about because religious people saw so much unexplained evil in the world, and continue to see it, and god is clearly not in control, nor does he seem to care. I wrote the above blog to gently satirize this desperate notion. Personally, I don't think life has to be easy all the time. A certain amount of suffering would make us grow and change for the better as humans. But tsunamis that wipe out 200,000 people in an afternoon and child molesters that rape and murder for years and years and never get caught? 9/11, the Shoah, mass extinctions? Clearly, these natural and man-made evils which have afflicted humankind for thousands of centuries show the absence, or the indifference, or the malevolence of god. I refuse to blame adam and eve for the evils in this world, and I refuse to believe that the state of this world and the state of humanity is god's "gift" to us. Of course humans have free will, but no god gave it to us. We can do whatever the heck we want, and sometimes we get punished, and sometimes we don't. Yes, it's possible that every injustice may be straightened out in the next life, but I find it hard to believe that god would be so ambiguous and ambivalent in this life and so perfect in the next. It all just seems like specious wishful thinking to me. The bible writers created the fictional character of god because they dislike humanity so intensely. Adam and Eve are punished for their intellectual curiosity. The tower of babel builders are punished for their artistic pretensions. I have no doubt that the people of the exodus existed, even if there was no exodus. Their constant whining and complaining and lusting after other gods makes perfect sense, but only if they have no real god to worship. If a real god had rescued them from Egypt, they wouldn't have dared to make that golden calf. If people had really seen jesus raise Lazarus from the dead, they would have had no doubt that he was the son of god, and jesus wouldn't have been so alone when he died. The bible stories only make sense as fiction; they only make sense if god is a fictional character. So how would people behave if god actually existed? Undoubtedly, no priests would molest children if they really feared eternal hellfire. Clearly, they do not fear hell; clearly, they don't believe god is watching their every move, or they would cut off their own dicks before touching a child. In his book called Justice, Dominick Dunne claims to believe in a higher power that rights all earthly wrongs in the next life. I am not picking on Dunne, but he represents the delusions of hundreds of millions of people who claim to have that belief even though their actions in this world make it blatantly clear they have no such faith at all. Because of the horrific thing that happened to his daughter (while god did nothing to stop it) and because of terribly unfair thing that happened to the man who killed her (while god did nothing to change it), Dunne has every reason to fight the unfairness of justice on this earth. But if he really believed that he would be reuninted with his daughter in heaven, and if he really believed that god would punish her murderer in the next world, I don't think he would put so much effort to attain justice in this one. Why do people cry when their loved ones die? Because they are dead. Would they cry if they really thought their loved ones were happily in heaven? No, they would rejoice. Why do fanatics rejoice when their loved ones blow themselves up in suicide bombings? Because they are insane. Why do so many pseudo-religionists support the death penalty, and why are so many anti-abortion? And why do they try to fight for these causes legally? Why don't they just sit in church and pray for god to execute criminals and stop abortions? Do they honestly think that god is on their side, and if he is, why doesn't he do the work for them? Clearly, these people have no faith in god at all, and they know full well that god isn't doing jack shit to serve their cause. If they truly believed in eternal hellfire, they wouldn't be in such a rush to kill criminals. If they truly believed in the sanctity of every human life, they would let god protect unborn children, they wouldn't execute anyone, and they wouldn't be so enthusiastic about sending young men off to die in wars. If god really existed, and if people really believed in him, that faith would be reflected in their actions, and not their empty words. So what are the statistics, and can they be trusted? Is it true that 90% of the human population believes in some sort of higher power? Even if that is accurate, even if people aren't lying to themselves or to the statistician, let's take a cold hard look at who these people are. Mostly ignorant, mostly uneducated, mostly brainwashed and indoctrinated into one culture and one religion, mostly uninterested in other ways of looking at the world, mostly devoid of intellectual curiosity. These are people that also believe in astrology, ufo abduction, and bigfoot, and they have no idea that the earth moves around the sun. Why should I be bothered by the great number of people who believe in things because they have never bothered to look further than their own shallow minds? Throughout human history, the dumbest ideas have been held by the most people for the longest periods of time, and the most brilliant ideas were formulated by one person, and this person was scorned and ridiculed for decades or centuries before the idea finally gained acceptance. Today, here and now, people still refuse to give up astrology, and people still refuse to accept evolution. If I was the only heathen on earth, that would give me pause, but since some of the most impressive thinkers on earth have made atheism and agnosticism logical, I feel quite assured that I am not blind, foolish, or insane. I trust in the minority opinion. The majority opinion still rules, because it is a whole lot less terrifying for most people to believe in god. I look at the world, and I see its many horrors, and I truly fear the idea that some god is "in control" of such a world. I know that Tolkien, Eliot, and Lewis were all bright, educated, well-read men. So how can I account for their faith? Wishful thinking, I suppose. If they are right, and I find myself in hell after death, I will send them each an apology for my disbelief. People who live for their faith? They have my grudging respect, as long as they don't kill for their faith, and as long as they are genuinely good people, non-judgmental and non-hypocritical. You have to live for something. Personally, I prefer books and movies. People say I live a lonely life, but my books and movies are real. Living for god is living for an illusion, but we all need our illusions, we all need to imagine our lives have some value. For many millions, the idea of god seems to do that. But for many other millions, god does nothing to change people for the better. They are still miserable, inside and out. People who die for their faith? Well, they're going to die anyway, so you may as well let them die for something they imagine to be worthy. People who fight and kill for their faith? Absolutely worthless, completely insane. I have said in another blog on myspace that people like the 9/11 hijackers lack true spiritual feeling (whatever that is), and I am not convinced that they believed for one second that they were acting in the name of god. Consciously or unconsciously, violent fanatics have no faith at all, they are completely consumed by doubt and despair, and that is why they wish to kill and die for their alleged faith. They are homicidal and suicidal, and they use god to give some worth to their useless lives. People who blow up abortion clinics and kill abortion doctors in order to save the lives of unborn babies? Just naturally violent people who would kill anyway, even if they didn't have god to tell them they are doing good. What about pseudo-religionists I have personally known and disliked? I have spoken about Cipri the pushy asshole, Danielle the lying whore, Bridget the self-righteous yunt, Sue the presumptuous moron, and many others in blogs on myspace. Not one of them ever inspired me to convert or become closer to god. Everyone of them poster children for disbelief. Hypocrites, liars, shallow, full of baloney. Yes, I am just as bad as they are, morally speaking, but at least I know how full of shit I am, and I don't pretend to have god on my side, and I know I'm not going to heaven when I die. Do I sometimes fear eternal hellfire? Yes, I do, and I am ashamed to admit it. By catholic standards, purgatory awaits me. By christian standards, hell awaits me. By my own moral standards, I am not fit for any kind of heaven. What is hell? Perhaps you sit in a room until the end of time, watching a never-ending movie of every single nasty and stupid thing you did during your life. If Gandhi is in hell because he never accepted jesus as his savior, and if Hitler is in heaven because he was baptised as an infant, then I will gladly and proudly face hellfire with the Mahatma. If god wanted to convert me, he would only have to make his existence known to me in no uncertain terms. He could have sent the very opposite of Bridget to me, to love me and change my life by example, but he sent that unmitigated yunt instead. He could raise my Uncle Bill from the dead, and I would become a god-loving and god-fearing man from that moment on. Why did the friends of jesus get to witness an actual resurrection, while we poor saps are forced to have faith? Faith, just like free will, yet another specious concept invented to rationalize the emptiness of belief. If god wanted to settle the silly and violent disputes between catholics and protestants, or the silly and violent disputes between sunnis and shias, he could have done so hundreds of years ago. He obviously has no interest in what we humans consider heresy and true practice. If god wanted to settle disputes between christians, jews, and muslims, he could have ended the Crusades definitively, but he obviously has no interest in this everlasting conflict. If Dubya really speaks with god, and if god really told him to invade Iraq, why did god give Dubya such incompetent advice? A real god would not fear me or hate me for my atheism; he would be amused by my pretension, and perhaps flattered that an atheist spends so much time obsessing over him. If god gave me my intelligence, then he would be pleased I am trying to use it. If god can know my every thought, then it would be sily for me to feign a faith I haven't got. A real god wouldn't need the constant adoration of his followers; he would have more important things on his mind. So why do people still believe? What is the cause of this astounding disconnect between horrific reality and blind faith? Fear, ignorance, hatred, all completely understandable human failings, all eventually curable in time.
I have heard stories about concentration camp survivors emerging from Auschwitz and no longer believeing in hell after death. This makes perfect logical sense. They have just endured hell on earth, a hell created by mankind in this world, far worse than any hell imagined after death. This is what perverse humans do so well, creating hells in real life when imaginative hells no longer satisfy them.
Some ultra-orthodox jews believed that the Shoah was god's way of punishing jews for not following his commandments. This is sad, pathetic madness to me, the same kind of reasoning Pat Robertson uses when he blames human behavior for deadly hurricanes.
I have also heard of some jews who retained their belief in god even after surviving the camps. They say, "Hitler took my life, my country, my job, my livelihood, and my family. I won't let him take my god." I can understand the bitter spite in this remark, but I cannot fathom the logic. What good has god done in this person's life? Is this a god worth believing in? A god worth worshipping? After god has done this to you, or let this happen to you, what value can you possibly find in your faith? God has removed all meaning from your life. He has performed his one and only job with complete incompetence.
Pseudo-religionists see god's presence everywhere. Is this a kind of madness? What is wrong with me, what connection is missing from my brain, that I look at the world and see only God's malevolence, his injustice, his random arbitrary scattering of goodness, his apathy, his inefficiency, his non-existence?
Pseudo-religionists believe that atheists are insane, deluded, foolish, blind, or satanic. Atheists see pseudo-religionists in the same way. I would like to think this is just a matter of opinion, but there may very well be a clear right and wrong here. Agnostics will tell you that we cannot possibly know the full truth. I think the truth has been revealed to us through history, through science, through the failure of religions to rid the world of evil, and through the apparent silence of god.
7/3 Does god really speak to our beloved president? Did god really tell him to invade Iraq? Does he know something we don't? Why do people feel so sad when a mother drowns her five children in the bathtub, one right after the other? god told the mother to do it, so it must be the right thing. Why do people say she is crazy, just because she talks to god? She wanted to send her kids to heaven, and they are in heaven, isn't that so? Why is everyone so darn upset about it?
10% of Your BrainIt would be impossible to judge the actual percentage rate, but I have spent the last 42 years of my life saying and doing so many dumb things, 10% may be about right. Who knows how many brain cells I have killed from drinking and drugging and eating tuna sushi? My memory gets worse and worse every year, and yet I can recall with pinpoint accuracy just about every humiliating defeat I would very much like to forget. I call these moments "the cringe." When I think of something I said or did a few years or a even a few decades before, and I actually cringe as if it had just happened yesterday. It doesn't really matter to me that no one else remembers these moments. I believe they managed little by little year by year to turn me into the spineless worm I am today. There are times when I look at the world and I think how utterly stupid other people are; other times I look at myself and I think, how come I can't do that simple little thing, and everyone else can? Why is my brain shutting down on me? Is there a connection missing?
I have noticed many red flags, warning me that people were bad news. Was I too thick to properly evaluate them? Was I too cowardly to confront people who were antagonizing me? Was I too lonely and pathetic to stay away from women who gave me sex as well as abuse? I am not masochistic. I don't enjoy it when friends, family, lovers, and strangers abuse me to my face. So I must feel guilty, I must feel as though punishment is owed to me, or I never would have spent any time with Bridget and Shelley. They had nothing to offer me but their bodies, and yet I clung to the hope that they would give me their bodies and their love. They gave me nothing. How very foolish to keep hoping for so long. Jennifer gave me everything, for a while. When I realized she was turning on me, I should have thanked my lucky stars that a beautiful blonde with a long legs and a perfect ass had given me everything for a while, and then I should have walked away, and I did walk away, three times, but I couldn't stay away. Put that down to loneliness and horniness and uncertainty. When would I possess such beauty again? How did total strangers know that I would shrink away from confrontation? Something wimpy in my eyes and my demeanor, I suppose. If only I had been willing to take them out, to make the world a better place without their useless existences, and then follow them shortly after.
When I am just waking up from a deep sleep, or when I have just fallen asleep, I am seriously disoriented. I have trained myself to turn off my phone at night. The ringing of a telephone is the third most obnoxious sound in the world, after a baby crying or loud knocking on a door. When a phone wakes me up, I am out of bed and answering the phone before I am fully awake, and it is a truly nasty feeling. People say to me, but what if someone is dead and your relatives are trying to reach you? The dead person will stay dead until morning, shit for brains. Natalie the yunt used to wake me up just as I had fallen asleep. Like so many female yunts, she would get offended if I fell asleep after sex. Hellooooo! I have a sleeping disorder. I don't get enough sleep at night. I've been up all day long. And I just had sex with you. Please forgive me for falling asleep. Here's a thought, yunt. Who is more rude? Me, for naturally drifting off, or you for intentionally waking me up? I am glad I dumped your sorry useless ass. I am sorry I was so nice to you when you called that last time, but I was flush from my honeymon days with Jennifer (!) and I didn't feel the need to hang up on your sorry useless yunt ass.
I never should have taken Katie Walsh's lame bulshit "molestation" story seriously. But I was so crazy about her that I believed everything she said. She seduced me. She was aggressive with me. I never should have listened to her when she said she wasn't ready for a physical relationship. It was our fourth time fucking! We were half way through fucking, and she cut me off cold. How foolish I was to stop when she asked me to. I should have kept on fucking her, I should have ignored her bullshit nonsense, and I should have made her walk home the next day. Respecting her was the dumbest thing I could have done. She was a fucking whore, and I would have gained her respect if I had treated her accordingly.
I am cowardly and weak. I am fully responsible for the failure of my life. I cannot blame the people who have hurt me. If I had been strong enough to destroy them, that would have been at least authentic action rather than lazy whining inertia. What is the nature of my morality that has stopped me? How much has my morality been programmed by society? That which provokes anxiety in me beforehand, fear during, and remorse afterwards--that is my morality.
I will never amount to anything. I will never be a great writer, or even a good one. One day I will be dead and gone. One day my enemies will be dead and gone. That is some comfort.
With any luck, Shelley, Bridget, Andrea, and Breshka are suffering and, more importantly, aware of their suffering, and aware of the reasons for it. That is some comfort.
I have said this many times before, and I will say it again, just in case people think I am a complete spoiled brat. I know full well that I have it better than most people, and that I should be grateful for many undeserved blessings. Still, my mental illness has ruined just about everything. I would love to be active and happy and content. Are humans capable of such a thing?
Every once in a while I tune into Fox news, just out of curiosity. I grew up surrounded by liberals. I consider myself an independent thinker, sceptical of politics and politicians. When I was 15, I had no idea who Ronald Reagan was, except that he had just been elected president. I saw him speaking, and pegged him as a phony baloney right off. Admittedly, everyone seemed to be a phoney when I was 15, including myself, but still.
To this day, I cannot fathom the degree of veneration accorded to Reagan. When did the word liberal become equivalent to godless commie traitor moron? When did the word liberal become such an insult? Yes, I have seen democrats demonize republicans, but Fox news really takes the cake. Those people are absolutely obsessed with liberals. They cannot get through a few sentences without using the word. They use the word liberal like Hitler used the word jew.
I was raised as an american jew. My opinions are biased, however objective I might try to be. I am the furthest thing from an expert on the middle east conflict. If I was a muslim raised in saudi arabia, or a palestinian raised in france, no doubt I would view Israel in a different light. I am sure Israel sometimes goes overboard, sometimes acts pre-emptively without good cause, sometimes hurts civilians unnecessarily. I do not believe that god gave the holy land to the jews, because I do not believe in god, and if I did, I would consider the entire universe sacred, not just a patch of desert in the middle east. That patch was considered holy by the bible writers because it was the only land they really knew. Their "worldwide" flood only seemed worldwide because they never traveled far from home. But 2,000 years of christian anti-semitism, and muslim anti-semitism, and worldwide anti-semitism (which truly is worldwide) makes Zionism necessary. Israel is not a holy land, and it is not exactly what I would call a safe haven for jews, but it is all we've got. And that is why I support Israel's right to exist and defend itself, by any means necessary. The arabs are spoiled sports. They got their asses kicked in '48, '67, and '73, and they still won't give up. Peace in the middle east? It'll never happen. If I ever ran for president, I wouldn't bother with the peace process. Complete waste of time.
A study was done of three groups. Drug addicts and alcoholics trying to give up drinking and drugging through AA, a god-centered support group, a support group for atheists, and a set of individuals on their own, with no support group at all. Across the board, in all three groups, there was a 5% success rate. Of course, pseudo-religionists will give the same baloney response they gave when prayer was tested: "god doesn't like to be tested, so he purposely didn't help out." Baloney, baloney, baloney. god never helps, prayer never works. It doesn't matter if you love or hate jesus, and it doesn't mater if your peers are helping you out; giving up booze and drugs is really really hard, and most everyone fails. P.S. Prayer won't make you less of a homosexual or a lesbian either, so don't bother denying who you really are.
When I was working in a privately owned video store, Blockbuster took over the lot across the street, and the owners of my store pathetically and pointlessly staged a demonstration against big business. Some moron old man came into our store one day and said to one of the employees (not one of the owners), "I think you people are being un-christian." What a freaking moron. First of all, why say this to an employee? And what has religion to do with this situation? Is blockbuster somehow christian? Did this guy expect us to turn the other cheek, just to make jesus happy? What a clueless, irelevant human being. Quite rightly, the employee just gazed at him silently. To respond in any way would have been very silly. In any event, my store went under for any number of reasons, and that paragon of pious virtue Blockbuster is now thriving under god's special protection.
June 05 The Concept of No-SelfMark Twain said that he didn't fear death because he was dead for millions of years before he was born, and that didn't bother him at all. This is an interesting concept to consider. 15 billion years of time passes before you come into existence, then you are alive for a few decades, then you die, and then you cease to exist for another 40 billion years while the universe comes to an end. If you don't believe in life after death or reincarnation, you have to face this fact: eons of no-self followed by self followed by endless no-self again. This can be truly terrifying. This vacuum, this total obliteration, this endless annihilation may very well account for why so many people desperately believe in some type of afterlife. Every once in a while I experience a brief flash of insight which quickly leaves my brain after a second or two. I actually understand the concept of maya, that life is illusion. 99.9% of the time, I see life and livng as the only reality, and my personal demise as the very end of reality, at least for me. I completely understand that the world will go on quite contentedly without me, that humans may continue to exist on this planet for thousands or even millions of years after I am long gone and long forgotten. I also understand that for 200,000 years before my birth, humans just like me (but definitely not me) came and went on this planet. They had no idea I would eventually take my place here. Even my great great grandparents could not have conceived of my specific existence. If they thought of their great great grandchildren at all, these thoughts would have been at best abstractions. Egomaniac and narcissist that I am, when I weigh my actual existence against my overwhelming non-existence, I begin to fathom the idea of maya, and no-self. It becomes a little less terrifying, and I feel a bit more serene and accepting of the whole idea.
6/26 I had a rather surprising revelation on my walk yesterday. Ever since my first attack of existential panic in college over 20 years ago, I have assumed that these brief profound paralyzing and terrifying moments of absolute detah panic were my true feelings about death. They come on quickly, unexpectedly, as if rising from my unconscious, and for a few brief moments I am sick with fear and nausea, unable to move, utterly terrified, and then the feeling passes just as suddenly. It is as if my unconscious has absolutely swallowed up my fear so I can function "normally" again. I have had approximately 15 or 20 of these moments since the mid-80's. When I have them on my walks, I literally stop in my tracks, unable to move, until the moment passes. The last two times occurred just as I awoke from a nap, and I have no idea what brought the attacks on. What was I dreaming about? How could I awake from a peaceful nap in such terror? I can't even remember how I get the moments to pass. It must be absolutely the work of my unconscious. In any event, for all these years I have always assumed these times to be my true feelings about death. In all of my other philosophical broodings, when I can be calm and logical and intellectual about death, I always figured I was somehow repressing my true terror. But now that I am an old man approaching the end, I'm not so sure. Perhaps I have finally acquired a bit of resignation, a bit of bravery, a bit of acceptance. Perhaps my calmness is just as real as my terror, and simply a different real authentic way of looking at the inevitable. I don't think I could have been so accepting 20 years ago, but now, I have lived with emptiness and futility for so long, death is beginning to look like a relief. For the longest time, I naturally assumed that my calm cool and detached look at death was my human brain acting in a deeply repressed and all too human fashion. It is how we go on living from day to day in the face of complete absurdity. Now I see that detachment may be just as human, and just as real.
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Send a private message
Subscribe to RSS feed
Tell a friend
Add to My MSN
Add to your network
Sign up for alerts
|
|
