Spiritual Theft

In version 1.0 of this blog before it was viciously deleted by  a trigger happy spambot killer I concocted an essay that claimed that Atheists were ugly. The argument followed the same line of thinking as the thought that educated people are generally less attractive than uneducated people. Education, personality and the cultivation of skills are tools that have been used for hundreds of years by "less than beautiful" people in order to be considered desirable mating material. My original thought was that people who arrive at a spiritual place that is contrary to the norm, who are not born into it by default, do so as a result of great struggle. Attractive people do not have great struggles in their lives because...they are attractive and the rest of us willfully give to them in abundance just for the opportunity to be near.  It follows then that people who have adopted an alternative thought system have done so as an act of compensation, and those who compensate do so because they have to.

As you can imagine, the essay was well received (NOT!) but what was surprising to me was who was offended by the essay and why. The overwhelming majority of static that I received for my indirect compliment of Atheists was from Atheists themselves.  It turns out I had grossly misjudged the overall construction of what constitutes a modern Atheist, specifically the default adolescent Atheist who was "born into the faith."  The responses that I received were supremely superficial never engaging with my main points and instead rested on the sting of powerful counter arguments like "Fuck you" and "Ricky Gervais isn't that ugly." While I'll admit that calling an entire group of people ugly is a bit brash I expected at at the very least a few pretentious well thought out retorts from individuals encouraging me to evolve.

Yet, after almost 300 replies not one utterance seemed even remotely intelligent or worth replying to. I had accredited a great deal of respect to Agnostics and Atheists because I felt in some way that they were shouldering the same confusion and fears about life and death that I was, but I was wrong. Sadly it seemed that these Atheists were as stupid if not stupider than the devoutly religious for whom they had made it their life's work to lambaste. Then it dawned on me that somewhere along the way the Atheist movement started to parallel the evolution of rock music. What started as a form of expression so powerful it couldn't be contained or explained through modern day motifs was interpreted and shrunk into a device to indirectly tell your parents to fuck off. In other words, the thrust and importance of the movement lost all of its meaning once it became an accessory to, rather than the foundation of, ones entire existence.  It was because of this thought that I started to believe that that the great majority of Theists/Atheists are guilty of spiritual theft.

The best way I can think of introducing the idea of Spiritual theft is this: Imagine that you and and some guy from 200 years ago want a hamburger. In order for the guy from 200 years ago to eat a hamburger he must first invent the hamburger. After that he must go out, find a cow, slaughter it, chop it into pieces, ground it up, harvest some wheat, (revealing ignorance) then do the next steps of turning wheat into bread, grow some vegetables, cut them up, cut down a tree, get a fire going, cook it up and eat it. For you to get a burger you have to get in your car, drive three miles, yell at someone through a speaker, wait two minutes, eat the hamburger. Both chain of events result in hamburgers being eaten but one is a more complex all consuming process. It wouldn't be fair to say that just because the two of you arrived at the same outcome that you have had the same experience.

Atheism is not a belief, it is a lack of belief. This lack of belief does not manifest because an Atheist is missing something inside of them, rather it is a realization that something is missing absolutely and wondering why. If the Atheist is not pondering then they have subscribed to a belief, a belief that makes them whole and stops them from thinking.  Faith is a belief in something without proof. This notion is acceptable in and of itself, the problem arises when people of faith attempt to moralize as if their faith is fact, which it isn't. If faith could be supported with irrefutable evidence then faith would cease to exist because it would be replaced with fact. Those of us who are handed Atheism are just as guilty as those of us who are handed Religion because it churns out the same dogmatic "I am right, you are wrong, my voice is louder than your voice" creeps.

When we were young we trusted our parents with making all of our big decisions for us, we relied on them in order to survive and thrive. But then we grew up into our adult selves and we moved away. Maybe your parents got divorced and perhaps you asked yourself "Did I every really love them?" or "Did I really know them/ did they really know me at all?" Conversely they may be thinking "Where did I go tragically wrong in raising this idiot kid?" or "I can't believed I spawned a pathetic little shit asshole." When we are young we confuse comfort and security with love and we don't really understand what is what until we test and scrutinize the details.

If you haven't tested it, then you haven't invested in it. The faction of Agnosticism/Atheism that I ascribe to does not reject Religion so that I can delve into my deviant desires without fear of judgement. My thoughts and feelings about existence don't give me the warm fuzzies or any sense of solace. For all intents and purposes, I welcome the love, I welcome the happy ending.  I want to be nestled in the bosom of the universe and hugged for all eternity. Unfortunately, I do not have proof to tip the scale in that direction, therefore I am left with only what I can prove.

The same goes for the religious among us. If you believe because you have always believed, then you have never really believed. You were born into a house that you never left and until you do, your free will is just an illusion. Born again believers en masse have the most transparent agenda of all.  In an attempt to atone for their life of crime or sexual transgressions they double down on kissing God's ass in the vain hope that he will reconsider.  It is my opinion for real faith to exist that it must be tested and cultivated through suffering and sacrifice without guarantee of reward. Any belief system that is weighted in reward destroys the altruistic desire to be good for goodness sake.

Another growing misconception is that belief/philosophy is a team sport. Like the hysteria created when a collection of athletes from different towns get paid millions of dollars to wear jerseys with the letters of cities within 60 miles of the rural pastures from which we were spawned, the process of belief has begun to resemble a franchise mentality. "Yer either fur us or again us!" no questions asked, no explanations desired. The less complex among our human ranks have rendered mans search for meaning down to a simple two party conflict. We are all given hats, foam fingers and rally towels with the expectation that we will scream in delight for the home team and boo/hiss if we see a flash of the visiting teams colors. We claim that the reason we have so much contempt for the opposing team is because they are misguided, uninformed and soulless.  We'll claim that our harsh judgement is rooted in the great sense of sadness and loss that we feel at the realization that a population of people are throwing away their lives. Yet, we are rigid and we refuse compromise, to do so would blaspheme the foundation on which our beliefs have been constructed. Instead we choose ridicule because as you know, there is no better way to persuade others to conform to your way of thinking than through verbal abuse. (Not!)

The most important thing that you'll ever think or believe shouldn't be handed to you based on your geography or the running trend in your familial line. Faith or the lack of it should not be a passive pursuit that you sign on to early on in life without continued evaluation. Salvation, transcendence or scientific supremacy cannot be bought, it must be earned. Further, don't poison the well of free thought with propaganda in order to convert people to your way of thinking. Just because you won the war and left an opposing army's city in ashes does not mean that you changed their minds. Their captured soldiers may elect to fight in your ranks but it is only the threat of maiming or death that binds them to your will. In order to change people's minds you must engage in honest, open conversation. Certainly you can hold the line and stick firmly to your values but at the same time you must truly be open to changing your opinion of yourself and all of existence. Only through communication and mutual respect can we ever hope to get to the nougaty center of how we truly feel and who we really might be.

Nostalgia

Warning: The Following is not funny!

I want to see the world 
through an old lens,
when theives and
enemies were trusted friends,
a filter to distort everything new
and soften all the colours put in view.
memory has a way of being kind
to thoughts that we rewind,
it's all film grain and missing frames,
deleted anger and absent names.

Real life car accidents are nothing like they are in the movies. In a movie everything is slowed down so you can experience each moment. Every scream of panic, every tire screech and groan of twisted metal is introduced to your eye in systematic flashes so that you can process the importance and severity of the incident. In real life there is no time for a reaction. In an instant you either instinctively make the right choice and swerve safely out of the way or you don't. In real life, there is not even time to yelp "oh shiiiiittt!" It won't be until several seconds later that you are able to discern whether you are dead. In real life, it will take you  minutes, hours, days or years to fully understand that single moment.

As an observer, other people's lives seem to have divisions. When we are young we watch our elders grow old and die. When we are old we see new babies born into our world and monitor their growth through various rites of passage. What we rarely see however is the evolution and change within our own lives. Every day if we get fatter, thinner, older, balder we don't really notice. Of course we've all had those moments where we look in the mirror and exclaim "holy crap, I'm fat" or "holy crap, I'm old" but this is usually after years of "business as usual." Sometimes When you are too close to something you can't fully see it.

J.D. Salinger the author of Catcher in the Rye died a little while ago. The book was an important part of my adolescent development so after he passed I read several articles about his life from various publications. One article that I found interesting noted that he spent the greater part of his reclusive years watching old black and white movies. It was as though he didn't like the world he was living in so he surrounded himself with the world he grew up in. Perhaps, it was the only world he truly felt alive in.


In many ways (obviously) I feel the same about the feelings that I am foisting upon ol' Mr. Salinger. During my formative years I was obsessed with movies, music and books. I felt energized and inspired by almost everything that I consumed with my eyes. As a youth I was hungry for the things that nurtured my creative spirit but unfortunately that all changed one day. 

At some point in my early 20's I was nearing the zenith of my awareness as a human being. I'm certain that many good books, movies and cd's have been released since that time but none have really grabbed or transformed me since. All of my favorite bands have either sold out, died or become a shadow of their former selves. I have grown through the extent of the lessons that all of their art could teach me but now there exists a hole that cannot be pacified. Science and mathematics are interesting fields but they do not move me on an organic level like art has in the past. Because of this, I never find myself quite connecting with anything new that is being created. 


I'm not suggesting that what was created in the past is superior to what is being created these days. I am not a fan of The Hangover part 1 or 2 yet I think Dumb and Dumber is laugh out loud hilarious. However, if Dumb and Dumber was released today, I probably would not like it very much, if at all. The reason I liked Dumb and Dumber is because it was attached to my youth. All the gags and fart jokes were new to me. As a youngster, I inflated its overall worth because it was in some way subconsciously meaningful to me.

As a child I was aware that other people died every day. It took me a long time however to truly realize that one day I would meet the same fate. Also, that same fate could at anytime be thrust upon me as quickly and as carelessly as it was on the people who came before me. This thought made me take pause and realize that often hugely important parts our lives go by without indication or notice. We get attached to the anger, love, judgement or confusion of a moment for so long that we fail to see the impact and consequences of our actions. We don't learn lessons as quickly and as readily as they do in the movies. 


I once thought that nostalgia was a happy sentimental feeling that was peppered with grief but it isn't. Nostalgia is simply sadness in its purest form. It is your body and soul now dead of feeling trying to claw its way back through a closed door. It is the wisdom that only comes with the loss of never being able to touch something ever again. It is a part of you, or perhaps the whole you that has died and fallen away, while you continue living.

Chance

Chance is the name of a guy who delivers melons. Unfortunately for Chance his deliveries only make it about half the time. Because of this, many people don't want to leave their melon deliveries to Chance. Due to lack of business Chance can't afford a cart or box van in order to move his melons. However, at unpredictable intervals everyone at one time relies on Chance to deliver their melons. Since chance cannot afford to turn away business he must take what he can get whenever he can get it. Unfortunately for Chance he is destined for failure because he is consistently overburdened with melons.

Chance has to hold all of the melons that he can carry at once and tries to walk them to their respective destinations. Melons as you know are unstable cargo and as such jostle about, especially at maximum capacity in Chance's arms. Every so often during transport Chance will drop a melon. We would logically assume that the melon's on the bottom of Chance's grasp would fall and smash first, but this isn't always the case. You wouldn't know it to look at him but Chance has great agility. Often times a melon that starts at the bottom of the melon pile is pushed and prodded into the middle of the pile. Sometimes, a safely secured melon residing on top of the pile will roll and jump to certain death while Chance is trying to secure a middle or bottom melon.

Should Chance arrive safely at a destination he is never thanked. In fact most customers treat Chance as though he doesn't exist. They instead lose themselves in the delusion that they willed a melon into existence. Either that or they impose a greater value on their own work and thought processes and decide that someone has delivered them a melon in honor of all of their hard work.


Conversely those who never receive their melons decide that Chance was conspiring against them all along. They claim that every time they have invested their melon deliveries to Chance that he has never come through. They look around at other people smugly eating their melons and decide that Chance has it out for them. Why else would these melon eaters look so satisfied if they weren't in on the melon smuggling secret?

Yet Chance continues on poor, lonely and with a battered ego trying his best to grab that brass ring, but just like with most people Chance is his greatest obstacle to success.