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Friday, October 10, 2008

Truth, Philosophy, Religion

Life is bearing down on me, it can feel so heavy at times, as the supports you've lived under all your life one by one disappear and you finally have to bear the weight on your own. When you realize just how heavy life really is, it's terrifying.

It always shocks me when I see people taking life so lightly, perhaps they're just putting on airs, but this thing, life, is deadly, life kills, like a bullet. there is no other thing in the world so ensured. No other thing in the world has a 100 percent mortality rate. yet there are so many people who treat it with so little respect.

The world is so full of people who are afraid, and most of all what they are afraid of is fear it's self. they build huge houses, large cities, learn to fight, learn to shoot. people get rich, buy clothes, and accessories for purely social reasons. all to protect themselves. all this excess, it's not the work of humanity, this is animalistic at it's basest form. simply living to live, living to avoid death. go and fend of the inevitable.

my favorite philosopher, Nietzsche believed that people always lived this way, that there was no escape from our animal selves, and no actions existed but those in the pursuit of power. the pursuit of security. the only chance he saw for escape was in what he called the "super man" a person who defines his own morality, rather than living by the rules of his genetics. But Nietzsche never said such a man really existed. But in fact that ubermench does exist.

the thing is, each one of us has this in us, that which is truly human above animal. that which would risk one's own life for a stranger, that which would weep at a painting when no one is around. That, is what I call faith.

faith is not what so many cynical people believe it is. it is not the dumbing down of the analytical mind. My ability to question and challenge is exactly what give me my faith. it is not ignoring truth simply to cling to a political or social structure, that does exist, and again that is the same animal activity as all the others, simply wishing for your self to survive, by protecting the system that protects you. But it is absurd to call Christians or any other religious people 'stupid' for doing this, because the only reason any person would need to decry another person's beliefs is to protect your own. So you believe in evolution? well evolution doesn't believe in you. If you need to get in a fight about weather evolution exists or not, what are you really fighting about? Then it is just two people fighting to protect their own beliefs, this is because weather evolution exists or not has nothing to do with how many people believe it. it doesn't need to be defended, it would survive with out you. the only thing at risk is the belief. so why criticize a person saying "you stupid people, and your stupid beliefs, you are wrong and I am right" no matter what you defend, you are still just a dog fighting with other dogs for a bone.

don't confuse what I say with philosophy, philosophy is the act of pursuing logic to a conclusion. and it can always be disputed. I don't like Sartre, I don't like Plato, I love Nietzsche, and all that really doesn't matter at all. Because very few of these people set out to write philosophy. they felt something and had to get it out. they published papers because they had seen that which is truly human, they had caught a glimpse of it, that which is indescribable. then they spent their lives learning how to describe the indescribable with logic. and it became fodder for the intellectual wars that continued ever after in universities, amongst people less smart than the authors, and following the wrong train of thought to ever understand them.

so, what am I saying? I'm saying, if you disagree with me, then you have misunderstood me. if you quote a statement and tell how this does not make sense, then you have miss defined my words, and misinterpreted my metaphors. I say this is true now, and true of most philosophers you have ever read. because, in fact, all philosophers, all poets, all religious texts have said the same thing all through eternity, even when they were saying the complete opposite of each other. Logic cannot describe what philosophy reaches to describe. it cannot be used to understand religion, or literature or art. these things are all those things that make us profoundly human, profoundly other than beast. It's like trying to understand french with a Chinese dictionary. or even more, it is like trying to understand french with an apple.

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