I just watched an episode of Suits with my mom about ethics, and morals and the law and almost cried.
Laws mean nothing to me. Morals do, but although I’ve heard and listened to opinions even religious ones I’ve always pledged to live by my own code based on my own thoughts and challenged myself to live up to them even if damage me personally. I’ve failed a lot, but usually because of too much passion and sadly at times with more selfishness than I want to admit.
Religious people say that this is impossible and that you can only look to God for moral leadership. I think they are crazy. I think it is a lazy and easy substitute for hard self examination. They say it is easy that if you have faith, you need never worry.
To me that was a truly ingenious trick, even if Jesus or someone like him came up with it. Even if it is a lie, ignorance that it is a lie and having faith does free you from angst. Every self proclaimed religious person I know has less stress and seems happier than me. They mock me behind my back, and I don’t care. Whatever works for them is fine with me. Well, until they start voting for pedophiles and …
Usually, I have little time to argue with these people, but in the rare cases I sincerely discuss “faith” with them I talk about learning (obviously just the tip of the iceberg) about Søren Kierkegaard in college. I never did any reading in my philosophy classes because I quickly learned it was too difficult for me to even try to read, much less actually understand, and that the result would only hurt my grades (I was all about grades in college). The only thing that mattered for grades was what the professor thought it meant and my ability to parrot that back on a test.
I told an outraged fraternity brother this because it was my second class with this professor. He scoffed and said no one was going to tell him what he read. He said he was going to read everything and not go to class. I told him that his notion seemed noble, but that I was going to do the opposite and I would get an A- and he would flunk. I have no idea if he read anything (I doubt it), but my prediction turned out to be 100% accurate and the only one who finished the final quicker than me was him, because he looked at the questions, didn’t even understand them, and just left. f
I am still too lazy to find the relevant text, but this was always in my thoughts the best argument for “faith” in whatever people think God is (The worst and most cynical is Pasacal’s Wager even if it is 100% true).
So the following I lazily (like every modern student apparently) took from Wikipedia, but it’s close to what I remember liking in college.
The leap of faith is his conception of how an individual would believe in God or how a person would act in love. Faith is not a decision based on evidence that, say, certain beliefs about God are true or a certain person is worthy of love. No such evidence could ever be enough to completely justify the kind of total commitment involved in true religious faith or romantic love. Faith involves making that commitment anyway. Kierkegaard thought that to have faith is at the same time to have doubt. So, for example, for one to truly have faith in God, one would also have to doubt one’s beliefs about God; the doubt is the rational part of a person’s thought involved in weighing evidence, without which the faith would have no real substance. Someone who does not realize that Christian doctrine is inherently doubtful and that there can be no objective certainty about its truth does not have faith but is merely credulous. For example, it takes no faith to believe that a pencil or a table exists, when one is looking at it and touching it. In the same way, to believe or have faith in God is to know that one has no perceptual or any other access to God, and yet still has faith in God. Kierkegaard writes, “doubt is conquered by faith, just as it is faith which has brought doubt into the world.”
The last sincere attempt I made to give a “true believer,” who I honestly already believed with ample evidence to be a racist and irredeemable bully and thug, a sincere chance to show me he had a heart and wasn’t just fucking with me (he was, I don’t know how well I conveyed that I was honestly giving him a sincere last chance) he wasted 20 minutes telling me I could not define blue.
I have never liked science, but I minimally paid attention to get my A and tried some version of remembering this on him.
“Objects appear different colors because they absorb some colors (wavelengths) and reflected or transmit other colors. The colors we see are the wavelengths that are reflected or transmitted.
For example, a red shirt looks red because the dye molecules in the fabric have absorbed the wavelengths of light from the violet/blue end of the spectrum. Red light is the only light that is reflected from the shirt. If only blue light is shone onto a red shirt, the shirt would appear black, because the blue would be absorbed and there would be no red light to be reflected.
White objects appear white because they reflect all colors. Black objects absorb all colors so no light is reflected.”
Now I wasn’t nearly that eloquent and just referred to the fact that it was the scientific reasoning. His point was basically that “blue” was just a random word and to him unlike Led Zeppelin who sang this,
I guess words have no meanings (actually he was and is just a huge prick), even though without agreeing on the meaning of simple words how can we have a sincere discussion? Honestly, I don’t know why I was giving this motherfucker a chance in the first place.
He moved on the faith and I thought about bringing up Søren Kierkegaard to show him I had thought about the issue, but then I thought to myself. I can’t agree with him on blue and I’m going to bring up Søren Kierkegaard? Exactly how stupid am I?
So I thought to myself. Jesus, this guy has read a lot of stupid books that I think are worse than reading just the Family Circus everyday over and over, but if after 20 minutes we can’t agree on blue, what the hell am I doing with my life?
I mean after all even most babies if you ask them to choose can pick out from among a red, yellow, and blue ball, which one is blue. I’ve never had a baby so I can’t prove that, but:
So I decided if we can’t agree on blue, I need to go back to my default position and just think this guy is a complete asshole and avoid him at all cost and I have. I blocked him from every social media place I was on and try to avoid him. I’ve seen him maybe twice since and when he would mockingly say shit like, “Brad thinks I don’t like him, but I really do!” I would say to myself, “He definitely doesn’t like me. He just doesn’t realize that I don’t like him either and no longer give a shit what he thinks, but that was always true too.” Total waste of time every encounter I’ve ever been unlucky enough to have with him.
I hear now that he spends most of his time on Facebook posting inspirational quotes like these. This is the guy I personally hate the most so why not choose him.
I could go into detail about exactly why I despise Tony Robbins. I always have, but I have personal reasons that added to my initial hate, but that would defer the gist of this post more than I have already so blatantly done.
If you wanted to argue the quote, I’d say fine, sounds cool, but how do you actually live your life because that is all that really matters. He went to the Republican Convention in Cleveland proudly openly carrying his AR-15, and apparently he’s always packing so clearly keeping my distance from him no matter how good or bad he truly is, “wicked smart” on my part.
Recently, I took a big risk with automatic 100% downside for me and huge possible downside for two close old friends, who because of it will likely no longer be my friends. Honestly, I pray (to whom I have no idea) I didn’t fuck up. In the case of one it was the very definition of betrayal, but I try to tell myself I did it for him too out of love.
One of my codes is that I will fuck up any friendship forever to save that friend. So I did that, it likely wasn’t my place to do it (it took me ten years to do it, which I knew had always made me complicit), and maybe it was haughty and idiotic to think it was.
Do your best to pick your friends wisely, hope to find a mate that would really value your happiness over theirs and that they would have the same view towards you, but sadly unless it’s been proven to you otherwise time and again, the most obvious thing in life is that you are truly alone and the only one you can really trust is yourself. Knowing this is sad and can be used to justify all kinds of horrible behavior, but maybe you can choose to use it to try to rise above it.
I honestly believe in the end we are all dust and given the infinite nature of time and the universe, just about anything we do is infinitely insignificant and meaningless. We are all just dots.
The Ferris Wheel scene in the Third Man is maybe my favorite one ever.
Martins: Have you ever seen any of your victims?
Harry Lime: You know, I never feel comfortable on these sort of things. Victims? Don’t be melodramatic. Look down there. Tell me. Would you really feel any pity if one of those dots stopped moving forever? If I offered you twenty thousand pounds for every dot that stopped, would you really, old man, tell me to keep my money, or would you calculate how many dots you could afford to spare? Free of income tax, old man. Free of income tax – the only way you can save money nowadays.
I saw a quote from my favorite writer Ray Davies on this that addressed the same issue; how we were all so small in the grand scheme of things, but how he saw the vast hugeness of humanity within each and every one of those dots. Ray should have been on the wheel with Orson, he might have made him feel some humanity.
He also wrote this about the seeming indifference of God and where he saw evidence of God and the hopes that left him with.
Big Sky looked down on all the people looking up at the big sky,
Everybody’s pushing one another around.
Big Sky feels sad when he sees the children scream and cry,
But the Big Sky’s too big to let it get him down.
Big Sky’s too big to cry.
Big Sky’s too high to see
People like you and me.
One day, we’ll be free.
We won’t care, just you see.
Til then,
Don’t let it get you down.
When I feel that the world’s too much for me
I think of the Big Sky, and nothing matters much to me.
Big Sky looked down at all the people who think they’ve got problems.
They get depressed and they hold their heads in their hands and they cry.
People lift their hands and they look up to the Big Sky.
But Big Sky’s too big to sympathize.
Big Sky’s too occupied,
Though he would like to try,
Then he feels bad inside.
Big Sky’s too big to cry.
One day, we’ll be free,
We won’t care, just you wait and see.
Til then,
Don’t let it get you down.
In “Casualties of War” the little regarded, seemingly way too naive character played by Michael J Fox said this: This goddamn thing’s turnin’ us on our heads, man! I mean, Just because any of us at any second might be blown away, everybody’s acting like we can do anything, man! And it don’t matter what we do! But I’m thinkin’ maybe it’s the other way around. You know, maybe the main thing is just the opposite. Because we might be dead in the next split second, we gotta be extra careful what we do. Jesus, man, maybe it matters more than we even know.
His opposite played by Sean Penn had an easier and always dominant philosophy that sadly especially in our current climate almost always wins: Yea though I walk through the valley of evil, I shall fear no death. Cuz I’m the meanest motherfucker in the valley.
I wrote this once still believe it “There is no reward for a life well lived other than to have chosen to do so”
I didn’t write these but I believe them to be true.
“I been saying that shit for years. And if you heard it, that meant your ass. I never gave much thought to what it meant. I just thought it was some cold-blooded shit to say to a motherfucker before I popped a cap in his ass. But I saw some shit this morning made me think twice. See, now I’m thinking, maybe it means you’re the evil man, and I’m the righteous man, and Mr. 9 Millimeter here? He’s the shepherd protecting my righteous ass in the valley of darkness. Or it could mean you’re the righteous man and I’m the shepherd and it’s the world that’s evil and selfish. Now I’d like that. But that shit ain’t the truth. The truth is…you’re the weak, and I am the tyranny of evil men. But I’m trying, Ringo. I’m trying real hard to be the shepherd.”
The following embedded song sounds sardonic and mocking, but it’s author, Ray again, was dead serious and facing the real world as bravely as he could and the message was exactly the opposite of the literal meaning which was what Winona couldn’t define in Reality Bites and Alanis Morisette accidentally changed the meaning of forever, which to her would be “ironic,” but by the actual pre-Alanis definition wouldn’t be.
Ed Byrne: “The only ironic thing about that song is it’s called ‘Ironic’ and it’s written by a woman who doesn’t know what irony is. That’s quite ironic.”
I’m not even sure that is true, but I think some dictionaries have weakened their definitions of the word to include Alanis’ use of it, which would make George Carlin cringe and die. Maybe that is how he died.
This is why I am a terribly ineffective writer at times. I am tortured trying to express my torture. and I just diverted myself from embedding the song I thought expressed it for three paragraphs to add my thoughts on one of the most absurd and over argued pop culture debates of all times, but
And …. I still haven’t posted the song.
One of my best friends, who always knew that he wanted to just be a rich doctor and is told me once, “You’re the smartest guy I know, but all you do is ruminate and it’s never done you any good.”
So I finished ruminating betrayed, my friend, and am again tortured and hoping I did the right thing.
Then again maybe I’m just telling myself all this to make myself feel good about myself, and maybe I have always been full of shit. With people nearly anything is possible except perfection and maybe even striving for it is a selfish personal excuse to further let you live with yourself.
