Tag: philosophy

  • Another tiring post

    The day that science creates something out of nothing is the day that I will seriously reconsider my position about atheism. As long as man is manipulating what is already in existence, and as long as we always find more questions with every mystery that we solve, I’ll always marvel at the intelligence, form, function and ‘interconnectedness’ of this universe. We’re tiny and almost entirely insignificant specks of life that exist in this massive space, and we have barely scratched the surface of the true wonders of just the human body, yet we’re arrogant enough to believe that our theories about what might have occurred billions of years ago substantiated by assumed interpretations of our current state is authority enough to declare that we’re here because of a fluke of ‘stuff’ interacting and evolving over billions of years to eventually result in intelligent life that has reason and logic, and choice and emotions, and wisdom and beauty and so much more…

    The entire subject is the biggest brain fuck you could ever get. We assumed that the speed of light was unbreakable for decades…and then, quite by accident, we break it, but yet we continue in our arrogance to assume that we understand well enough to make absolute statements about what is and what isn’t true about life, death, this universe, and everything that exists within it, and in the process proclaim that there could not possibly be intelligence behind it all…it’s simply astounding the lengths we would go to just to obtain a level of peace so that we don’t have to accept our impotence and insignificance when faced with the grand design.

  • You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.

    Albert Camus (via phredosophy)

    This is surprising to see given how many people I’ve seen quoting Camus, but all of them are in search of the meaning of life? Duh! This is the kind of simple logic that eludes us when we go in search of greater meanings of greater things without appreciating the simple beauty first. 

  • I must learn to love the fool in me—the one who feels too much, talks too much, takes too many chances, wins sometimes and loses often, lacks self-control, loves and hates, hurts and gets hurt, promises and breaks promises, laughs and cries. It alone protects me against that utterly self-controlled, masterful tyrant whom I also harbor and who would rob me of my human aliveness, humility, and dignity but for my Fool.

    Theodore I. Rubin

  • On suicide and insecurity and…my life

    The odd thing about suicide is that it sometimes seems like a romantic end to a painful life. But if there was a single time in your life when something unexpectedly pleasant happened, it gave you a taste of hope that creates the doubt, no matter how little, that suicide may not be the answer. The fact is, we don’t know what the next moment brings, let alone tomorrow…although the trends of our lives may provide some predictability as to what to expect.

    It’s when we dismiss the notions of hope, and worse, when we dismiss the opportunities of happiness that we succumb to our nihilistic tendencies to want to find comfort in the surety of knowing, rather than the insecurity of hope. Eventually when we’re faced with the possibility of happiness, we’re reminded about the pain associated with the retraction of that happiness from our last experience, or experiences, and in typically human fashion, we avoid that which hurts us, especially if that hurt is prompted by others rather than a hurt that we choose for ourselves.

    I’ve stared death in the face more than once…and it’s not a pleasant place to be at all. It’s a conflicting place to be because no matter my conviction, my hard-wired survivalist instinct always left me uneasy about my choice to want to end my life, because in the back of my mind I knew that I was being insincere by denouncing the infinite possibilities that actually exist towards finding happiness. 

    But the greatest realisation in all this was, for me anyway, that my misery is often a making of my own choices. I’m not saying that I chose to be miserable…I always chose to pursue happiness, but the choices I made in such a pursuit had an inherent risk of making me the target of betrayal, condescension, ridicule or just blatant cruelty, not because of who I was, but because of who I sought such happiness with. I saw my fragility and vulnerability in them, and so naively assumed that they would appreciate me appreciating that tenderness in them…instead, as is the nature of those that are insecure or overwhelmed, they struck back blindingly because the realisation of their vulnerability being exposed was too daunting for them, and so the trend of their lives that taught them not to trust resulted in me being the untrusted one.

    I didn’t choose that outcome, but I did choose to risk trying to connect with a troubled soul knowing that they may not embrace me the way I was wanting to embrace them. And in knowing that I am myself a troubled soul, my naivete, coupled with my unnatural idealistic optimism compels me to continue wanting to touch the beauty that I always see lurking behind the sad eyes of kindred spirits, having absolutely no reason to believe that they would reciprocate…ever.

  • yesterdaywasdifferentthen:

    “Above all, don’t lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.”

    —

    Fyodor Dostoevsky (via misanthropyaddict)

    What starts this lie? Is it a lack of belief in ourselves? Is it a sub-conscious effort to protect ourselves from pain? Is it an instinctive response to protect ourselves in the face of uncertainty because we may not have developed the coping mechanisms needed to face a reality not of our choice or making? And when our perspective of reality is altered to the point where the lie becomes hidden, and we can no longer connect the dots of our dysfunction or dis-ease back to the lie, do we then observe the end state and define a remedy based on that? Or do we start with the assumption that a state of dis-ease or dysfunction is a result of choices made at a time when we were trying to protect ourselves thereby assuming that we’re all functional and balanced to begin with, and then trying to work our way through the maze from the end to the start in order to identify the incident that led down the path that gave birth to the lie that landed us in the state of dis-ease?

  • brain clutter

    The most important gifts parents can give their children has to be a healthy self-esteem, a moral grounding and an appreciation for principles. Parents that are liberal sicken me. Those that leave their children to develop their own views about life under the guise of not wanting to impose their own views of spirituality, religion and politics on them are idiots. 

    If kids were born with the maturity, logic and reasoning abilities to figure that out on their own, then why do we keep them under parental guidance until they’re 18? I have personally witnessed how kids and adults fall apart later in life because they lack the resilience to deal with a value system not of their own making, or one they do not subscribe to. And when it happens, we’re quick to apply labels to their state of mind so that we can compartmentalise and commercialise their ‘illness’. And the afflicted ones hold on to these labels because they need it to cope with their lack of control…they need it to feel alright about their weakened state without thinking they’re to blame, because the burden of responsibility is too great.

    So we focus on the symptoms, ignore the nonsensical selfish behaviour of the parents, and hope that the next generation will do a better job of figuring things out because wholesome traditional values are too oppressive or repressive or uncool to impose on our children…lest we forget that they make healthier choices if they have an informed base off of which to decide. 

    The noise…the fucking noise in my head…it makes even a bird’s beautiful chirp sound like a nagging shriek until I stop for long enough to realise it’s just the beautiful chirp of a beautiful bird…

  • If you haven’t wished for death at least once in your lifetime, you haven’t lived

    Cynically Jaded

  • Sincere reciprocation is the highest form of gratitude.

    Cynically Jaded