Journals

The body is a journal. It records your genetics; your age; your health. It is nobody's job to dictate how you write your journal. It is your duty to write in that journal experiences that you are proud of. Of course you can't be proud of every single sentence in that journal so then its your job to prelude those events to a game changing moment. Each and every other journal is a little different, so don't judge another by it's cover. Don't pick up a journal and read the first couple pages and decide it sucks. It has to change. It will change.  This is why you don't burn books. This is why you don't ban books. The words in books are the words that compose our reality; how we perceive that reality. Begin burning books and you begin to burn humanity. Thus, we ought to keep writing.  And if we keep writing, we begin to understand. And if we understand, we begin to help each other write each other's entries.

Realizing Reality

One of the most frequent questions I get in regards to my atheism is how I could justify my morals. Not that I can't be a moral person but how do I justify them. If I may, they will say something along the lines of "How can you repudiate the killing of millions of Jews if we are just chemical reactions?" I firstly give them a well deserved, condescending smile; the sort of which treads the edge of unbecoming awkwardness yet clever insinuation. I probably start with an in-genuine "ugh," and take a deep breath. This sorts of casuistry is the kind of false imaging that demonizes people without a personal god, which happens to be huge minority despite the huge growth in our ranks. I don't mean to digress too much, but these sort of lies have become almost as pernicious as the ideas of religion themselves, because, in addition to the destructive power it has demonstrated to have on people's minds, it has proven itself to be a great enabler of personal profile degradation. It is easily observable that the religious attitude(a huge portion of population) towards godlessness reflects the current construct of our government and other aspects of our life which I hope to address in later posts.

Humans are quick to conclude animals don't have much of a conscious. And with that I must agree. They don't know they are them or what they are. They simply do. They survive. They survive using only the tools they have been allotted by natural selection. The lion, for example, has been allotted amazing sight paired with more than tolerable hearing and scent. He has four legs compact with lean muscles that help him sprint up to 50mph when close to prey. He has huge, jagged teeth, ostensibly designed, that rip through flesh. He has a rough tongue that peels the skin off animals. He is equipped with retractable claws grab and hold prey. The lion is engineered by nature to rule. He in engineered to kill.

Humans, on the other hand, are insignificant turds, unfortunately. We have five senses of perceiving our world and they are average at best. We have been provided with two legs and two arms, both of which are hardly any threat to a wild predator that has cornered us by ourselves. We have relatively straight teeth that have been designed by nature for grinding more than chewing. The taste buds on our tongue detect sweets swiftly and increase our yearning for such sugars instantly. We are not equipped to rule. We are not equipped to kill.

Lions are equipped to rule. They are totally servile to their instincts and their inclinations. They don't even understand servility. They simple survive. They rest for approximately 20 hours. The other 4 hours includes socializing, defecating and hunting. They don't choose to obey their instinct because their instinct is to survive. Our genes contain the directions to survive. Adhere to your genetic plan for survival, or, for the most part, you don't exist very long. By natural selection they have been designed to survive by ripping apart the flesh of animals. That has been and will be their method of survival.

Humans are equipped to rip apart reality. If we existed within the same reality that all other animals, including lions, existed in, we would be cornered in a cave with nothing but arms to swing and legs to kick at pure muscle and teeth. We could not outrun them as they would overcome us. We could not kill them because of lack of physiological weaponry (unless you want to grapple onto a bear with your nails and try to snap his neck with your flat teeth, be my guest). However, the alternate is to immerse yourself in a reality you create. For starters, we would find ourselves in aforementioned scenario had we picked up a rock and continue to abide by its real implications: its a rock. However, we molded the capabilities of the rock to our own reality and, with its aid, made spears and fire, to name a few. To summarize shortly and avoid adding annoying fluff- we shape the reality that we exist in, being the perception of the material world is our own unique reality. To be more specific  we are capable of manipulating the reality of the system we exist in which is Earth. Restated in an even more user friendly statement- humans can stretch the function of the simplest material.

If, by survival default, we abide by a reality that we create, then there is way not to behave without assigning that behavior with either good, neutral or bad effects. A rainfall for the lion is simply good because water runs scarce throughout the regions the majority of lions thrive. The lion doesn't even assign a position to that reality. We must acknowledge that, because we are human, borne of the brain we harbor and innate tendency to survive, we assign a reality to any cause we are faced with. In this case some (most) will dance out of euphoria; some continue on with indifference; and some cower in pessimism. Morals must be subjective. Furthermore, reality must be subjective if we acknowledge that particular knowledge can be utilized in almost infinite ways. To acknowledge anything otherwise is to acknowledge we are more animal than human (I state that in the humor of our species' pride).

With the acknowledgement that there are potentially infinite realities to any causation we must first acknowledge that the existence of a benevolent, omniscient, and infallible deity would indeed justify only one, or few, realities to any moral. However, from all the scripts we have, we know that the deity is, by default, lacking the former characteristic.  We must also acknowledge that infallibility in this context insinuates divine order. Insert any deity and his commands and not many of them have been ignored by its adherents. Just to name one, stoning woman for their lack of virgin status at marriage is considered antiquated and in some circles, i hope most, even inhumane. We are now stuck at a sinister injunction in which both sides have no justification of their actions. (We mustn't forget all the things religious people have done in the name of their deity and done so with a capricious attachment to some parts of their scripture. To name a few, crusades, witch burning, flying planes into buildings, etc. Insert your favorite heinous act justified by religious text and you have a robust repudiation already. Back to our injunction- we have no justification for anything.

Is that okay? perhaps we have no justification. Can we not leave it at that? Some of us have committed to stupid things for stupid reasons with even stronger, but stupider conviction and some of us have done good things for no reason with the conviction of nothing more than our own altruism. 

I believe we should be able to leave it here, at the injunction in which a god cannot justify your actions and the godless need not justification for their behavior. Would it be too much to say that some commit to the behavior they choose because it makes them happy to see others happy? Again, we are not engineered to rule; to kill. We innately are opposed to killing our own species as is most of the animal kingdom. It is in our genetic code to preserve our species. So what is it that makes people justify actions otherwise? That is something we will explore later.

Let us begin stripping the reality of the holocaust. Ignore Hitler; his religious convictions; the preluding centuries of antisemitism; the condition of Germany and face the reality of this single fact- 11 million people were murdered in the span of a second in the time clock of human existence. Strip it further down to simply the abjectly contemptible methods of murder, and strip it down the line of reality so on one side lays the subjectivity and the other objectivity. Approach the right side and you see millions of Jews, Poles, gays, Jehovah's Witnesses, gypsies, resisters,priests and pastors, disabled persons, and black Germans were sent to concentration camps, shot, tortured, worked to death or ultimately sent to the gas chambers. Strip the reality of this even further, I picture a line of people, no labels assigned, no race or ethnicity identifiable, ordered into a great long and winding line. The plane on which they exist I don't know, but that is the point- to strip the reality in mind of any subjective influences. They march rather swiftly into a confluence on other, free roaming people. These people are perceived bigger and wear hats and imitate whip cracks. In front of them lay four different holes (this is literally basically an animated doodle to me). Each hole a different color, but the color of the holes are nowhere close to the uniqueness of the the screams of pain that each person lets out as they fall into the hole. Sure my brain can assign different functions to different causes, but my imagination has failed me in comprehending that many agonizing screams. Those agonizing screams are after all another causation that I must assign a reality to. I cannot help but assign one reality (of mine) and that is utter disgust. And of course I do not condone it nor would I imagine myself committing to, or supporting such a cause.

Take a step back and we now know that many people can think different about different things, such as rain. The holocaust would be a less contentious example, however, unequivocally there will be some pirates hijacking the outlook that this event was an abjectly shameful and disgusting event in human history. For the most part we have all justified our disgust with the Holocaust with the fact that 11 million people were murdered. Do you really need a divinity to justify that killing is wrong?

We aren't designed to kill. Even an elaborate speech, brilliantly articulated with attention to veracity won't  convince the bible humper.

Strip not flesh, but reality. Before we commit to any behavior, we usually think it through (if you don't believe me then take a note from serial killers) and consider it's implications. To that degree one mustn't go far to argue that ruminating on our behavior is not a hard task. Furthermore, one mustn't ignore that morals are not something you develop overnight. Justifying a single action is more so like instigating the realization of a certain reality. People don't wake up one day and decide to shoot their neighbor as it tends to be a laborious process. The general public ought to have no trouble with the following proposition: you don't have to consciously choose to drive your car, despite the potential dangers, environmental effects and sometimes psychological cost of it manifested in the form of anger, impatience, and enervation. The reason- you have to. You haven't even entertained the idea of riding your bike for your commute. "Should I drive today" jumps around in the mind less than the simple answer of "yes." In fact, you don't insert your key into the keyhole, open your car and take your seat thinking anything remotely close to "yes, I choose to drive my car." It is part of the reality you have created and it must be done. The circumstances shape the reality you create for yourself. If the reality you shape eventually becomes unconscious modulation, then we must infer it becomes a behavior that is unlikely to be deterred.

The only method of which we can possibly flip the reality of an unconscious behavior is by offering it's antithesis wrapped in a well placed appeal to a better reality that it will create. Thus, a middle class individual could, upon months of rumination, compromise of morals, and an immaculate plan could flip from consuming to preying. Again, to deter that mode of reality a force greater than that person can offer the antithesis wrapped with a punishment of sorts and sway them from that behavior.
This may explain the religious having to justify their behavior with an infallible deity..

Thus, to justify a behavior one must acknowledge that the only hope humans cling to as to survive is to mold the world around them to fit a reality we want (this has implications of its own that we can explore another day). Secondly, we must acknowledge that us humans commit horrible deeds towards the planet, environment, animals, and other people. We are sentient beings but we are no gods. Therefore, we must strive for a better reality and justify our actions in the course of a better reality. This means that we choose to neglect behaving for ourselves but for others. It is with the realization that we are not greater than the universe that we will be great for each other.

The Cost of Ideas

What is the cost of an idea?
Does it cost a life? Perhaps a myriad of hours of thinking?
Was Einstein destined to draw out general relativity from the second he doodled the letter e and a couple numbers? I think we'd be hard pressed to support anything but the general agreement that the man spent hundreds of hours working on, and thinking about this universe we so vaguely understand. The cost of his idea- a lot of his life's dedication.
That would mean time. That would mean money. It meant devotion.
The cost of my Catholicism- free. I was born with the idea, ingrained into my puny head at a young age, left to ponder the one and only force of good in the universe. To me the cost of the idea was free. Alone, the cost of that idea only affected me. Collectively, approximately a billion Catholics worldwide, that pernicious idea has costed the other 5 billion people time money and devotion. We still argue over a woman's right over her body. They still spend billions of dollars to counter all secular movements whether it be social, political, or educational. Furthermore their arrogance has cost us our devotion to other social, national, and economic problems. An institution amassing a billion people has an incredible opportunity and has indolently squandered it- both the people of that faith and also the people who fight the crazies.
We cannot ignore why religion is such an infectious and attractive choice- because its a cheap idea. In many instances its free. By no means do I mean to quantify the quality of ideas, I merely attempt to make the point that thinking is an exigent process so understandably the individual would much rather circumnavigate it. And again, that isn't a problem until it affects other people, namely people not sharing their idea.

The cost of my atheism (or more so free thinking) - fear, time, money, possible ostracization from the family and even general groups. I am not even twenty years old and already it has cost me a myriad of hours but I regret not one of those hours. This idea I hold close to my heart cost me a lot because it is a thinking that requires more than kneeling and Sunday masses. This required mental humility and a daily trip to the books. As I type this I think even more on my ideas I currently support. "Waking Up" lays in my backpack as "The Language of God" calls my name from my drawer in my desk back in my dorm room. Challenging one's ideas is a costly thing to do. To do otherwise is to cost the world seven fold.

Setting Sight

I hate the god of public opinion. I don't believe in gods but I believe this one exists.

This god is a white man. He wears a nice suit. He is an ingrate.

He is well groomed. He is rich beyond comprehension. He is the richest 1% of the world.

If god existed he would've struck down this idol long ago. Alas, someone else has.

Larger than Life

I like systems that work.
Systems that do not collapse on themselves; ones that lack few contradictions. Stripping any given dimension of reality of contradictions is unfortunately an exigent process. Even more unfortunate is that those contradictions I am about to speak of are capable of undoing the system of human existence (which is flawed in itself).

Lets take a step back and go over exactly what I mean by everything I've mentioned earlier. By system I mean a seemingly organized methodology and steps that keep intact the part of reality it is responsible for. An example of a system would be capitalism. It is a system of free commerce and free ideas. It has many moving parts, the power of the individual to govern their commerce being one aspect of the system, that attempt to stall or even fix the contradictions. A gargantuan contradiction of this system is the huge power of the rich, one contradiction that tightens it's knot ever more so tighter as time goes on. I will not berate capitalism, nor will I deny that capitalism has some good aspects.

Let us now take a dimension of reality we exist in. By that I mean an aspect of the observable world we live in, and condensing it into a system. Do not forget everything exists in a system. Ideas exist in a system as they manifest themselves in the mind, pulled and pushed by the waves of the society it exists in. The dimension of reality I am concerned with- Nature: the purest of systems and most perfect of systems. It could be possible that women have been blamed for most of our sins because Mother Nature herself made a mistake and went forward with making the sentient that is humankind. Her biggest, and only, contradiction.

Man has a propensity to reduce the dimension of reality it exists in: sucking the life out of it; stripping it naked; and furthermore leaving it barren of any seeds to regrow and replace the wasteland.

Man is a leech. It is parasitic. It consumes. Grows.
And it believes this is it's manifest destiny.
It yearns to be larger than life,
be a system in itself.

Together, let us discuss what it is to be human, and more importantly, how to do it better.
Together, let us establish a more perfect system, free of pernicious arrogance.
Let us stand shoulder to shoulder & united.

Yonder, Youth

I sometimes imagine myself as a seven year old, opening my eyes up the morning of the first snow of the winter. I had one of those dreams in which I haphazardly recalled some of my childhood memories- perhaps getting my coveted Jurassic Park toy or game boy (which death will do part). It was one of those moments where everything came rushing to your sense, crashing down like a waterfall and upon getting hit, tossing and turning, directionless. In my instant of opening up my eyes I see snow.  It is then that I forget everything even rushed to me, that I saw what I failed to see and heard what I hadn't heard in so long. Nonetheless, my seven year old brain took to the white cold powder outside. As servile as I was, my body obeyed. It got itself in a warm pair of pants and reluctantly clothed the skinny little chest with multiple layers, layers I could not count after mother insisted upon what felt like a hundred more. I almost ran outside barefoot out of the intense euphoria. I wanted to make a snow angel. That was my innate tradition. I would sprint outside, escaping the abjectly insipid play of T-Rex devouring my sister’s Barbie doll, and find the comfiest of snow patches, one cleansed of all dirty spots and sticks and stones. I would not jump into it. Call me circumspect. However, I was not about to devoid my patch of it tidiness. The toughest step was accomplished and I had begun my ascent to my goal of snow angel. Naturally, my next step was to inspect closely for any inadequacies. By grace of my approval, the patch was ready for a good settling. This had to be done in good form, homage to the angel I was about to make. So I turned around, and fell, bottom first into my clump.  I never immediately began the ritual of swiping my arms and legs up and down a flat dimension that was the snow. I lay there (thank you to mother for putting on a couple more layers) and stared at the sky. Sometimes there were dark clouds, sometimes I spotted a flock of birds, and sometimes the sun was out. It ignited in me the fire necessary to fuel the machine that was to make the perfect snow angel, so I began swiping furiously, as if the multiple motions would create a better indent in the snow, and lay there panting for breath, excited to stand up and witness my handy-work.

I must have gotten some shut eye. I must have been wiped. I think to myself that snow angel was the damn best I’ve ever made.  I stand up and I find myself on my bed.  It is still dark; a sun barely pokes through the window. The refulgence highlights my arm hair and creates a stark contrast between shadow and light on my chest as it hugs my back. I stand there motionless and in awe of the scene until I am brought to a new arousal- I look outside. There is no snow outside. There are no jackets on me. There is no angel on my back.