Yesterday evening I had an interesting time exploring certain aspects of my own personal philosophy with regards to the nature and inevitability of death. I’d gone from Mr. Hands to DMT, to conspiracy theorists which posited the idea of a holographic self and a global elite of reptilian shape shifters with copper based “blue-blood”, then further still. All of this information was absorbed through the handy time wasting tool known as Youtube, and ultimately lead to what I consider to be have been a timely and worthwhile train of thought. I felt a little bit uncomfortable with what I found initially, but became motivated to answer some questions that until that point had only been present in my mind passively and for short periods of time. In watching what is arguably one of the most disgusting videos on the internet (Not available on youtube, and I will do you the personal favor of not linking it here.) I ended up sleeping for only two hours, and gained some peace of mind regarding the nature of my existence. It’s interesting how one thing leads to another, and how a mind in a constructive state will often find a way to derive something useful out of what is ostensibly total garbage.
The conspiracy theories I found presented some minor coincidences in human history but for the most part blew tiny details out of proportion while ignoring the larger facts that so obviously contradict the conclusions they seem to have reached. It seemed that the conspiracy videos started out with very simple and common knowledge things and then magically arrived at fantastical ends without an intermediary step that would provide substantial evidence for their claims. Instead of having an intermediary step, they circumnavigated the need for one by arguing that the evidence for the outlandish claims they would later make or were in the process of making were and continue to be as plain as day and as logical as the rather simple and reasonable claims made at the beginning. I see, in my limited understanding of Abrahamic scripture, or at least religious fundamentalist groups, organized western religion as often being similar to these conspiracy theories, except that they come with a richer and more noble historical background. On that same token, I do not believe we should discount the writings in holy books as something useless. As allegory, they can be quite illuminating stories that help make sense of man’s place in the universe, but when taken literally and turned into dogma, are no better than glorified conspiracy theory, irrational in nature. I see it as something that takes the common knowledge of human existence and it’s problems then offers a quick solution that puts certain people, terrified at both the prospect of being alone (i.e. not part of community or something “greater” than their self) and of someday not existing at ease with the added bonus of not requiring too much mental strain.
In trying to get a balanced opinion, and actually starting to express some real but notably irrational fear at the notion of the scary “global elite”, and more importantly death, I turned to Richard Dawkins, a man so dedicated to rationalist thought and atheism that he is often considered more rigid and dogmatic by religious fundamentalists than others consider them. First I revisited an old interview of his on the Hour, then I watched an hour and a half-long debate between him and a man named Macgrath who claims to be an atheist turned Christian whilst remaining an evolutionist. Yes I know, that’s alot of -isms for one man. I’m not going to go into the details of the debate but suffice it to say I was greatly impressed by both men’s respect for one another while staying completely attached to their cause. One line really struck me near the end, when Macgrath asks Dawkins why he so passionately opposes religion. Dawkins argues that we are lucky to be on this planet, alive for the short amount of time we’re allotted at all. Before this, whatever this is, it’s most likely that we were nothing for the whole course of existence that preceded it, and we didn’t seem to mind. Why would we mind being nothing again? After all, nothing has no brain or neurons in order to be self aware, nothing is nothing, it is the absence of something. The collection of atoms that is who I am is unlikely to ever align again in the same meaningful way that constitutes who I am. It may contribute to other living creatures, but not the entity I call myself. I say unlikely, but not impossible, we must focus on probabilities to avoid being dogmatic, and be able to discard our explanations at a moment’s notice providing something better comes along. This prevents us from being irrational in defending a nonsensical argument based on our attachment to it. The universe is a mystery, and chance favors me never finding the truths to my existence in this lifetime. I am, however, capable of opening doors for other people. I’m capable of immortalizing two things about myself: my accomplishments, and my DNA, through my children. Creating upstanding people with good morals who are better than I am, even just by a smidgen, progresses life and ensures my immortality, just as it ensures my father’s and his father’s before him. My grandfather died, but he’s still being talked about, right now as a matter of fact, and parts of him live on through me, my father and my aunt. He’s nothing, but even as nothing he’s still guiding the lives of others.
I think being able to see the limitations of being human and to simply doing our best to answer the questions available to us to the best of our ability ensures lasting survival. It ensures that a part of us will be present at the moment that humanity does answer the big questions, and puts to rest notions of insignificance.
With reference to the chronological sum of human existence, you could relate a human life to a day, and this allows me to quote one of my favorite films, 500 days of Summer:
“Most days of the year are unremarkable. They begin, and they end, with no lasting memories made in between. Most days have no impact on the course of a life. May 23rd was a Wednesday.”
If you were to relate humanity the course of a life, then each human life can be considered a day. Now most days aren’t remembered, but this doesn’t make them unimportant, as they all made their mark in some way or another on the interconnected web of human life. Some lives, however, greatly add to the expediency with which we answer the great questions of the universe, some detract from it, and logically some, but chances are very few, provided humanity something that was completely and objectively neutral. In addition, the value of some lives isn’t fully understood until after their death when the reward for living a virtuous life can not be subjectively perceived by the creator. Such is the case with people such as Vincent Van Gogh, hard working masters who honed their craft but were only appreciated out of their own context. Similarly, a day may pass as insignificant, but may later resurface in one’s consciousness when it’s value becomes apparent, such as a day a man went to be the bank and made a deposit not knowing that in 10 years time the teller he dealt with would become his wife. The inverse is also true, days that seem very important at one time, such is often the case in childhood in adolescence, and may fade from importance. This is a slow move towards neutrality which can be seen in human life as well. We don’t remember the majority of people in the tabloids back in the 1960’s unless of course they had something else to offer the world in terms of talent and/or ingenuity. We remember James Dean, JFK, and Marilyn Monroe vividly, but a whole host of their contemporaries significantly less. In this vain, although perhaps not in others, their contemporaries offered something that contributed to the sum of human existence something closer to null value than they did. This is not to say they detracted from it, which sets the basis for the next point.
To detract from human progress is to be active, just as to add is to be active, but naturally there is a marked difference between being actively negative and actively positive, just as there is a stark difference between matter and antimatter. To destroy means to repress progress by controlling people, killing people, or other means. By impeding a single positively productive person’s upward trajectory, you are taking an asset to the progress of humanity away and thus ensuring that it’ll take even longer to answer the big questions. Death is something that happens to everyone, that we must all accept, but for someone to take the life of someone else, or purposely create conditions that make it difficult or impossible for that person to move forward, that is unforgivable in the grand scheme of things, that holds us back as a civilization. We’re not just a self that lives and then dies, we are a part of a civilization. This makes us accountable to more than just ourselves. We can’t answer the questions of life in a satisfactory manner, we can make up stories and convince ourselves of their truth but this had no real objective value, like religion, because it doesn’t adequately explain the world we live in, at least as we perceive it if not objectively. The stories with the most value are still those that open eyes to aspects of reality that may not have been previously considered, even if they are wholly allegorical. As allegory, Holy scriptures can in fact be quite useful, I’ll get into an example of this later on. The little sphere of your life is part of a much grander sphere called humanity, and beyond that existence, and beyond that the universe, and beyond that who knows. It is also clear that we are not the smallest level either. We correspond to humanity the way a day corresponds to a life, and perhaps humanity corresponds to the question of existence the way a life in turn corresponds to it. Finally, maybe a similar correspondence can be reached between existence and the nature of the universe. As you can see, I’ve simplified things one level down to provide context. In another example, a cell lies within a body without a sense of self. A cell is an extremely complex evolutionary creation but we consider it to be simple because we as humans often act as the reference point against which cells are measured. Being that a human is the collection of billions of cells with complex ways of communicating and allocated functions, we would argue that a human is far more complex than a cell and this stands to reason. Cells are born at roughly the same rate as they die, and a brand new human emerges every seven years, but this does not mess with our sense of self because it happens gradually and strategically. On the same token, in this world, populations expand and contract in an S curve graph shape that is regulated by a number of factors such as abundance of resources. Without adequate resources, humans die, the same is truth for cells. Over a life, a person evolves, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse, but overall in one direction, + or -, provided its not perfectly neutral, something that is hard to do, considering the span of + and – are infinitesimal mathematically but neutral is only one (as a side note, aristotle argue states of neutrality of which there is only one, but we wont touch on that as for our purposes it would lead to the argument that too much + would lead to a – a negative while the inverse is not true, something which is overly simplistic and problematic.). Over an existence, humanity evolves. With each living and dying person representing a cell that seems extremely simple relative to the whole of humanity, we maintain a relative balance that occasionally is exposed to natural disaster when it’s growth far ex-cedes it’s death, the magnitude of which depends on the magnitude of growth. This is true even of asteroid impact. The more people present, the more people die, and the strongest, and in some cases the luckiest survive to start the cycle of population all over again. But I digress, the point is that Man is to Mankind as Cell is to Man and so forth in either direction. This means that a perception of self is incidental and incorrect. Just think that we are the only level of this chain of existence that can understand it, and then as a whole, humanity can understand it. This makes us indeed very fortunate to be part of this club, a cell that is part of humanity, a day in a life. And we should do our best not to take the easy way out and instead ask the questions that might indeed eventually provide a legitimate, whole understanding of the nature of existence and then the universe for humanity. To be flexible on your ideas, to create and to question means to move society forward towards a lofty and worthy goal, thats worth it. We should feel privileged to be self aware and feel we have to earn this treat that we get, instead of fearing that it may be taken away from us like a child holding onto a toy for no reason. When a cell dies, the body doesn’t usually die. Humanity lives on beyond you, to keep yourself living as well you have to create.
It’s easy to be a destroyer, but to be a creator requires effort and to sacrifice. Being a creator sometimes requires work without reward. And life doesn’t hand out rewards at set times or provides rewards as a direct result of being “good”. This can lead certain people to go crazy and feel life is unrewarding, which also blinds them to future rewards that may pass in front of them. Rewards are out there everywhere, and just like people created money and assign different values to different material things, it is people, not some universal system of right and wrong, that determine whether or not one is deserving of a reward. Rewards thus have become more than simple pleasures, they have become levels of the measure of a man. The more honestly and seriously someone has worked to achieve a rewards, or reach a goal of a certain value, the more value they will in turn have than people who worked less diligently, and on average, the more impact they will have on our answers to the larger questions.
September 8, 2010
mdoagad
