A Bit of Clarity on my Faith

I have trouble finishing these entries sometimes, as many have fallen into being a permanent draft, never to be published. I'm not quite sure why at times, other than that my ideas during the writing process, and suddenly the present entry feels inadequate and insufficient. It's not that I'm indecisive, because I'm not, it's more that pinning down some of my beliefs is just not possible. My spirituality, like my mind, is fluid. Anything truly and fully static doesn't change, but like a river, the mind follows a relatively similar course on short intervals of time, and over long intervals, cuts blazing new paths that are completely different from before.

Do I even need to have a fixed set of beliefs? It makes it easier to explain things to people, but it also makes me feel confined. If I choose only one spot on the spiritual plane, don't I lose the ability to see the others? Occasionally, shouldn't I seek a new vantage point, and see other lands? Diversity is a concept that should be applied to all levels of our being, not just our social lives.

It's enough for me that much of what I feel on a day-to-day basis is born from and ultimately reminiscent of some sort of Christian code of ethics. I try to use a modified and more contextually applied version of the Golden Rule ("Do unto others as you would have them do unto you") when approaching different situations. This is not conscious either (most of the time), but more of a subconscious rule applied to my thought processes.

It's also enough that I know that reality, in some form or another, is eternal. Whether that eternality be God, gods, or the omni-realized nature of reality, is ultimately not of supreme importance to me. The underlining concept is that reality is forever, and possessed of the ability for perceived change, allowing life to occur. Consciousness occurs in many forms, so whether there is a conscious face to reality (God) exists, or whether reality just exists in every infinite form possible (omni-realization), does not constitute a real concern for me most of the time. If this is a damning statement for me (one that relegates me to hell), that's fine. Any paradise that does not emphasize the beauty and wonders of the unlimited potential of our minds is not a blissful place for me.

Perhaps one motivator, one grand spiritual dream I have is of the potential of the human race. Being born from reality, I see no reason why people can't aspire to reach every dimension of reality. What I'm saying is that humanity should be able to move from its point of incipience (which is less a point and more a river of time during which the reflection of the face of humanity ultimately becomes visible) to its point of omni-realization, where some form of human consciousness realizes eternity and creates that final bridge from singular human existence to total human existence. Indeed, my grandest dream is to be a significant part of that process, even if significance is a concept lost with regards to omni-realization (there can be no significance when ALL things exist simultaneously and equally).

Some days I fear we won't reach that goal, and not because humanity is damned by some aspect of itself, but because like anything there always is that chance. Now, while in the grand scheme of eternity (where time is meaningless), humans always achieve that goal every second in some non-distant but timeless transcendent way, for our 'timeline,' our river of existence may not ultimately flow into that omni-realizable ocean. In the back of my mind, fears of infrastructure collapse, of horribly unlucky and species killing events, of human-caused events that damn us all play out in this horrible video of possibility. While I have that fear, I have the desire, the belief that we can move forward toward our grandest destiny.

What troubles me a lot these days is what my role in any of this can be and how I should achieve it. It's not necessarily enough to take a meta-perceptive role of my consciousness, where I view myself as a tool for use by myself (wherein I analyze myself as a variable within the equations of reality, and try to discern the answers). It boils down to much more mundane and present things than that. Should I shoot for teaching and see how big of a splash I could make there? Should I pursue business and try to accrue capital (both monetary and human), in the hopes that I have enough resources to see the right moment and seize it? Or should I do something completely random when it presents itself, and follow whatever course it takes me on?

I can't know that I'll have an important role in our species rise to metaphysical greatness. Spirituality is about growth, about the strive to perfection. And what I see as the hallmark of our species (relative to the environment that produced us) is the ability to seek growth in nonphysical ways, to aspire to goals that are intangible given our present senses and capacities. I can't know if we'll reach the vision I have in mind. I can't say that it has the most utilitarian value relative to the daily functions of our species, but it's not meant to. The goal I have in mind would represent a chain of events, of evolutions, of paradigm shifts in humanity. It's only at the end, when one looks at the river of humanity, that its omni-realized face will become visible. And while I can't know if this will happen, I have faith that it will.

Why I Don't Believe What I Don't Believe

I'm often known for saying randomly, and without warning or provocation, that I don't believe in whatever random thing. There's a few different things I say a lot, and while normally I do it just because it's funny and I enjoy being an ass sometimes, there is an actual basis, belief, and utility behind what I say. At its core, my disbeliefs are what constitute my beliefs and my motivations, and also the way I perceive and understand things. I thought I'd explain the statements I make and why I make them, that way the people who aren't reading this can gain greater insight into the possibly arrogant and self-absorbed mind that I call mine.

Statement #1: "I don't believe in time."

This is a big one in the sense that I say this all the time, usually just for the effect of disturbing people. But there's a real belief present here. I do believe in time as a measurement, because it is a useful means to organize and prioritize our day and our lives. What I don't believe in is treating time like a resource that's more valuable than people or other things. I can't stand the borderline-psychotic obsession with time that moves too many people in this country (and perhaps in a lot of Western cultures as well). People pretend to be busier than they really are (or think they're busier than they really are), and in truth, they're not. We're only as busy as we pretend to be. When I say I don't believe in time, I mean that I don't believe that time and schedules are what we should order our lives around. Instead, schedules should be an aid, and should be ordered by lives; never vice-versa.
I wear a watch, I keep my two alarm clocks on different times, and my car clock hasn't had the right time in years. The more that time is perceived as an organizational device and less as an element and object we have to obtain, the better. As it stands, we (I'm guilty of this too) use time as an excuse to prioritize random and often insignificant things over people. Time does not exist anymore than feet or inches do; they're a human-constructed concept. The moment time becomes a priority over people is the moment time ceases to be useful and instead becomes a punishment or pain. Here is where time should be abandoned, for nothing should be more valuable to people than other people.

Statement #2: "My non-existent soul," or, "I don't believe in my soul."

Don't misunderstand me please, because I think you're welcome to have a soul. While I don't believe in mine, I don't disbelieve in souls in general. In fact, I do believe in souls, although my definition changes almost daily. It's a bit to fluid to be pinned down I guess. With regards to my own soul though, I consider myself soulless. In the last couple of years, I lost the perceived need of an eternal self. The basic motivation for this was that I stopped personally believing in the Christian concept of heaven and hell that I was brought up on and moved onto a different view that was self-created. I don't really believe that I will ever die. Don't get me wrong, this body and mind are going to die in the next 50 years. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, so it has been, so it will be. The same will be true for me.
The difference here is that I don't identify my eternality with any internal being. I tend to identify my existence with the human race in general and with reality, so the termination of my body is just that - the termination of my body. While I don't have a precisely defined notion of what happens to me after death, I believe that with a continual and eternal reality, I will be present no matter what because I cannot simply cease to be. I may die, but what I'm part of will not, and as such, I will live on forever, undying though dead. My body and consciousness may fade (or it may not, I don't know and I'm not that concerned), but my core, the essence of which I am will always exist. So while I don't believe in my internalized soul, I believe in my externalized eternality. In my belief set, any belief will work, so please feel free to have souls. As for me, I'm content to not, simply because it saves me the hassle of having to worry about it. Makes for interesting if not obnoxious conversations too.

I'll go over more of these later, but for now, I need to go do other things.

Love

All right, so the title isn't exactly creative, but to be completely, I'm not quite sure what I want to talk about here. I have a vague feeling in the corner of my mind, but I can't put a finger on it yet. I also realize, however, that I may yet discover my conversation topic just by starting to write. Here's hoping.

I wonder some days if I'll ever fall in love. Love can be a scary thing. Attempting relationships can either come naturally to some, or if your me, it's a challenge of the greatest degree. Self-introspection has often lead me to the realization that I'm socially awkward and shy. This complicates my feeble attempts at relationships of any kind with anyone, but even more so with the women who catch my attention.

The bulk of my sophomore year and summer were spent working through a kind of depression. I have only come out of it of late, and I fight almost every day to keep my hard-earned happiness and positive disposition. Time alone last year listening to my own thoughts was the equivalent of me cutting myself. I attacked my self-esteem multiple times a day meeting with the kind of vicious success people rarely want. I have many talents, but my ability to cut myself down, to inflict the mental self-injury I did, is not one I'm proud of. Granted, it's a sign of the fact that I'm smart enough to destroy myself, but that takes little intelligence. I'm more proud of the battle I had in pulling myself back to happiness.

This summer brought out a lot of good in me. I learned to feel more comfortable in my own skin. Part of this stemmed from the fact that I truly earned the respect of some of my co-workers. It also grew from me learning to trust my intuition. This summer taught me that I'm smarter than I think and that my intuitive feelings usually lead me in the right direction. I've spent most of my life ignoring my feelings in order to obey logic, only to find myself scared of risk in the process. Instead, when I followed my instincts this summer I met mostly with success, whereas the situations I over-thought usually met with less success.

Today I try hard to follow my intuitive feelings. It's rough. Logic comes easily to me, and my ability to usually think through situations is actually pretty good. But that doesn't beat what my mind knows before I do. It's scary though. With greater ambition comes a greater chance for failure. Life can end at the apex of achievement or in the bottomless pit of despair. Goals can be set, but there is no guarantee on their success. Ultimately, I don't quite know what my realistic goals are. But lately, I've been setting one ambitious goal, one I don't know if I can make. But it's a good goal.

I don't need money, I don't need to succeed as a writer, I don't need career success. If I find love, the kind you earn and make yourself worthy of in life, then my greatest goal will have been met. When you can love one person more than you love yourself, you've made the greatest risk you can in life. In giving that kind of love, you give up so much power over yourself. When one person holds more value to you than yourself, then they have almost complete power over your happiness. You make them a god over your being, and lay at their mercy. Love shows itself when even when they hurt you, you don't destroy their happiness just as they did yours, even though it would be easy and would satisfy that dark corner of every person.

When you give truly and absolutely of yourself, and find the love reciprocated, there can be no greater feeling. Even when the perceived love is only illusory, the happiness is real. I've dealt with the illusion, now I want to find the real thing. Love is both a hard and easy thing to find. Marriage is not all that hard to find, but love and marriage don't necessarily coexist. Even true love may not work through a marriage, as marriage is both a union made of love and purpose. Without both, the marriage can never be truly successful.

I look around me some days. I'm awkward, I don't always fit in easily. Sometimes I feel like I'm a stone skipping across the pool of human experience. With regards to my age group, I feel like I will never fit in much of the time. Despite all of that, I know that I would find an untouchable happiness in a shared love with another human being. In their presence I would find solace, but more importantly, a quiet and impervious joy safe from whatever sadness or destruction that might attempt to shatter it.

And through that love, I would have children. Those children would be the second progression in my love, because in my children I would find unconditional love that I would give anything to protect. My soulmate and I could grow together in raising those children, and hopefully, our love would grow too. There would be challenges, ups and downs, but if the love is worth having, we would conquer those hills and valleys. At the end of our lives, we would close our eyes content with the fruits of our labor, because ultimately, we would have done it all for and through our love, through which all things were made possible and valuable.

Really, I'm having trouble expressing my feelings here. Normally, this would be a bad thing as a writer, but not all things are meant to be expressed through words. Some things are found through the looks and emotions you send people through the nonverbal signals that bounce back and forth from person to person, carrying more meaning than words can ever hope to. The responsiveness of the eyes, the smile or frown of the mouth, the posture of the body, the tone of the voice, the total sum of a person that infiltrates your mind and blasts it with so much meaning that you understand a person in more ways than you ever could normally.

A whole range of emotions can be conveyed. I walk around some days. When I'm not thinking about my books or about whatever vague task I have at hand, I'm lost in thought, dreaming of that hopeful and wonderful day when I'll find even a fraction of love. I then marvel at how I can earn it, how I can be made worthy of some woman's love. I look at other people in relationships, and wonder how they made themselves worthy, and wonder at where I failed in that shared respect. Maybe it's the logic and thought process I apply to way too many things. Maybe I need to stop thinking so damn hard and follow my gut instincts. It may hurt a lot, but it probably should in many respects.

When that one day does come when I find love and know that I have it in return, my life will have full meaning. I will never feel lonely, no matter how far away or isolated I may be. And no matter how dark the nights get or how cold the winters become, there will always be that radiant ray of joy, shining forth from my beloved, burning away all the fears and insecurities that surround me. I don't know when I'll find love, or if I even ever will. I hope so though. I'd give up all my other dreams just to find that special kind of love that makes all other things in life secondary, the kind of love where you and your lover become two stars orbiting each other, drifting through the cosmos without a care.

At the end of the day, we'd fade together into the darkness, as our own children grow to prominence. And as we turn to dust, we'd find immortality in our love, in the legacy of our joint accomplishments, in the godliness of our love-borne children. Though the darkness would invade our minds, ultimately closing down our starry consciousness once and for all, a gravitational bond would keep our decaying souls together, ultimately trailing through eternity as a radiant beam that would be perceived by the few star-struck lovers looking the same way. If there was ever a dream worth having, a goal worth pursuing, a thing worth fighting for, it's that kind of love.

I had no idea where this article would go, but I'm somewhat pleased with the result. I know ultimately where I want my road in life to go, and I just hope that I'll be smart enough to take that path when the opportunity arises. I could definitely miss my chance or chances in life, and I pray that I never do that. All that said, I draw this long-winded article to a close, and with the morning well begun, I ready for bed, dreaming of that life-defining day when I may find love...

The Future

I'm not normally one who worries about dieing. I'm don't want to die anytime soon, but I'm not afraid to die. I have a few small things I want to get done before I die, but I won't begrudge the day when it comes. It's a cycle and a process, and I'm not going to fret over it.

However, some days, I want to keep living. Maybe not in this flesh-based form, but my conscious, my pattern, could continue. Bar any great misfortune or accident, humanity seems to be on the verge of a paradigm shift. In the next 500 years, things should begin to change rapidly. Hopefully, carried by our brilliance and driven by our ambition, we'll branch out of our solar system and into the rest of the universe. Everything will change. On top of that, innovations in technology may lead to startling changes in the way the human mind works. Nanocircuitry may replace the neural wiring of our brains, creating a replacement brain that is faster, networked, and virtually immortal.

Human culture as we would know it would cease to exist in the face of brand new developments. When we one day merge our bodies with machines to the point where is neither is truly distinguishable, one benchmark in the evolution of humanity will have been reached. When the majority of human beings no longer worry about age, but instead exist indefinitely in computer nets and programs, a new benchmark will have been reached. When the first people of thought are born, people who have no flesh counterpart, humanity's physical transcendence will be done. Once me move past bodies, everything will change. Millennia of human evolution will be only a mental memory, with no organic counterpart to call out their heritage through DNA. It will be a fascinating time, though for the people born and raised in that time, it will be completely normal.

Currently, we stand near the brink of at least a few major changes. Many people in the field of technology believe that the next 80 years will bear witness to the beginnings of the merger between human body and computer technology. Downloading your brain into a computer network may be possible by the end of the century. It also may not. Ultimately, there may be hindrances to that merger, hindrances that could hold the process back by any stretch of time. There's a pretty good chance that I might just barely miss the death of natural human death, and while I don't begrudge death, the limitless possibilities that would open up for me when I'm no longer physically bound to my future withering body are limitless.

If I live to be 80 or even 100, I might live long enough to keep on living. Maybe I'll even be fortunate enough to download my neural pattern to a computer network, thus creating my own personal paradigm shifts. Without normal senses, the whole of my consciousness would change. Words, ideas, information would become the root of my conscious thought, and the only physical senses available to me would be those that are mechanically obtained. My body gone, I would no longer occupy a true physical presence, and would instead exist between networks, borrowing a little power from computers across humanity's presence. Then my mind would blossom in new and unprecedented ways.

Time would take on new meaning as my computer based mind could move at far greater speeds. Millions of years could pass for me in only a few normal years. It would be odd to the say the least. Though I would pass normal conscious human thought by billions of years in the average lifetime, there would always be something new. Moreover, all people would be made that way, and with the memory of an old world comes an even greater fascination with the new one. When human consciousness is redone, I hope I can be there to witness it. I have a few curiosities I want to attend to, and there a few challenges I look forward to dealing with. When 2 to 6 thousand years of human advancement are dropped from our genetic and cultural history only to be replaced by man-made machines, I'll be waiting (provided I'm alive).

I want to work on redefining humanity when that happens. Philosophers rarely have a chance to be useful, but it will be during those crises of identity, those years of human history where everything old is forgotten or not useful and everything new is terrifying and uncertain, that philosophers (or anyone with any intelligence, really) may find a new niche. Complex new problems will come to the forefront, metaphysical and epistemic problems that had previously only concerned academics will concern all of humanity. All things will need redefining and reconfiguring. New cultural elements and forms of expression will need to be created, and I want to be a part of it all.

I know I said it earlier, but if I can live another 80 years, I might keep on living. I turned 20 recently, and if I can make to my personal centennial, I might just be able to shed my body and move on to something else, all while retaining some shred of my consciousness. I'd love that opportunity. I'm not afraid of watching everything I know change. It will be startling, but it will be amazing, and I can't wait.

If I don't manage to live that long, or the paradigmatic technological changes don't happen anytime soon, so be it. I'll die at the end of my life happy, because I will have still lived it to the fullest possible. Or, if chance ends my life long before that, like say tomorrow or 5 years from now, I won't hate fate. Life happens, and I'll get over it. After all, I'll be dead, so it won't matter that much to my no longer thinking mind at that point. Really, if I live a full 40 to 50 years after today, enjoying a wife, children, grandchildren, and some friends, then I will be immensely satisfied and die with no regrets. And as I close my eyes each night, ending another day, I'm made aware of my mortality, of my fleshy effervescence, and though I may not want to die yet, I'm content with the way things are, dreaming of the way they could be.

When and Will I Die?

For whatever reason, I've thought a lot during the course of my life about me dieing. Not that I've lived a life surrounded by tragic deaths that would lend credence to my potentially morbid fascination with death; I'm just drawn to death in both theory and reality. Death is one of the most basic and essential components of human life, and yet it is reviled by many cultures and religions. Death, the horrible termination to the once enduring life, the bringer of sorrow to those who remain, the serial killer that hacks down everyone at the most tragic moments possible. Even when death brings an end to pain, it's still mourned.

I'm not saying it's easy to let go, because it's not. I'm an extremely sentimental person, and everytime someone dies I feel whole chapters of my life folding up and ending. My memories stretch back to even a young age, and when avenues of possibility are put on a permanent hold due to a death, I am sad. But then there's a part of me that doesn't believe people ever die. It's never truly clear where life begins, and you can debate it all day. I try to avoid much time on that. Instead, I believe life is a process, and that process is reality. I find it hard to believe that life ever truly began. If it began, there has to be a creator, and if there's a creator, that creator must be eternal and exist outside of time. If the creator exists outside of time, how can it interact with our reality?

To me it's rather simple. Reality is the god of itself, the creator being the created and the created the creator. Eternity exists in the sense that reality in all its infinite forms always existed and always will. Linear modes of thought and perceptions are not applicable here. Time is nonexistent at the most fundamental levels of reality, and is rather a measure of the rate of change. Time exists where there is motion, and reality is constantly in motion. But reality may never really move. If it's all things simultaneously, there is no change. Oddly enough, reality is all-encompassing enough that reality seems to change in the universe of consciousness inside each of our minds.

If there is a God, that God the collective consciousness of all minds, the resounding resonance of all thought bouncing off of each other in harmony, the echoing waves of which bounce back through reality shaping it in startling new ways. With time not being a hindrance, they sound across all of reality, changing past, present and future as we see it in our ways. I don't believe time can be static. Rather, it must reflect a dynamic shaping of events throughout reality playing off one in another in a grand game towards whatever goal. Ultimately, that goal is inconsequential. We live, we die, the end.

If you adhere to normal conceptions about death anyways. I know that I will one day die. If an accidental death doesn't kill me off first, the withering of my physical body (or even, though hopefully not, my mind) will force me to yield my sole bastion of existence in this material world. My neurons will cease to fire, my consciousness will fade, and all that of me that can be perceived in this reality will disintegrate into a dust that will ultimately become something else.

What happens after death is a mystery, which is clearly why it scares so many people. I can guarantee one thing that will happen after your death. Your constituent atoms will drift apart and form into something else. The matter that you borrowed for your brief yet long sojourn on earth will be leased out to someone or something else for awhile. Reality is in the process, and your body will be in the process of transforming into something new. The beautiful thing about reality is that for every end there is a new beginning. Though it may be frightening and new, it's usually beautiful. Some mountains must eventually die for the valleys, and rocks to the tide. Waters will forge their ways through the earth. If the earth had screamed and fought against water, the Grand Canyon would not exist, nor would the Nile and it's fertile lands, nor would the bulk of civilization.

Reality works through change, and resisting change is like fighting the ocean tide with a wooden stick. I find it easier to sit down on the shore and marvel at the patterns that waves leave over time, sand ripples and waves across stretches of beach. Every few hours, the ocean paints a new picture on the shore, but that picture is always changing, so it's never really done. It's also never really begun. It just always exists, constantly reinventing itself, striving for perfection and always achieving it by its continual search for something new.

When I die, I will decay. I couldn't care less about whether or not I'm buried. Ideally, my body could be put to good use. I don't know how, but I'm sure there's a way. And as for my consciousness? I figure if I have a mind now, I've always had one. Reality never really creates something from nothing; it creates anything from everything and everything from anything. It never started; it just always was. I believe my mind is that way. I don't really know or care whether or not I'll float up to some pearly gates or fall down to the burning gates. Really, I hope that reality will hit the reset button on me and put me in something new.

Maybe I'll become a tree, and spend my time reaching ever higher in a race to reach the sun. Maybe I'll surge through the earth as water, cutting my own path and reshaping entire continents and thus the world. Maybe I'll become a tiny little electron, darting from bonded atom to bonded atom maintaining the quantum integrity of our microscopic universe, and on good days, I'll manipulate quantum strangeness and be in two places at one time. Who knows?

Maybe if I'm really lucky, I'll become a creature of thought, existing at the intersections of conscious thoughts between individuals. Then I could be love on Mondays, bursting with energy as the thoughts of two lovers meet and take shape, forming a brilliant happiness within both their minds. On Tuesdays I'll be the reckless ambition that both creates and destroys empires, forcing the most unexpected, unwanted yet always interesting changes.

For Wednesdays, I'll be joy. Wherever there is happiness or ecstasy, I'll be there harvesting it, saving it up so that on Thursdays I can become sadness and find it wherever it is. Then I can share all the happiness I found with the dispirited, and bring new hope. Fridays I'll be in their dreams, and after awhile, I'll become them. In their dreams they'll create, and ultimately, I'll become their canvas. Then on Saturdays I'll become their energy and drive, so that they can make those dreams meet their reality, and even the farthest star becomes tenable in the grasp of their hopefulness.

Then, on Sundays, when their lives near their end, I can go to sleep with them as they shut their eyes for the last time, and wake up with them as they open their eternal eyes to the ultimate reality. Then together we'll go into a new week together, living as the raw and amazing emotion that makes human beings so wonderful. It will be fraught with ups and downs, but reality was never meant to be static. There is no life on a straight line, only monotony. Off that line lies the infinite and twisting paths of life, replete with joy, sadness, life, death, beginnings and ends and all sorts of frightening yet enchanting things. When I die, I don't want to rest. I want to dig into new layers of reality and shatter my old consciousness with crazy and unprecedented revelations. I want to come out of Plato's allegorical cave and cease to look at the shadow people that birth forced me to look at all my life. Life was great while it lasted, but so will this be.

People ask me why I obsess over death. Some days I think I'm beginning to understand why. If there is beauty in birth, in the cries of a child shortly after it meets the world beyond the womb, in the helplessness and innocence of a baby who is on the verge of its explosive growth, in the smiles and laughs and cries and yells of its fledgling consciousness, then I think there can be beauty in death. With the exuberance that comes with the fullness of life in all its flavors and variety comes the sleep and transition to something new. I'm not going to fear it, nor am I going to rush toward it.

I'm going to relish every day I have of this wonderful life, and charge towards every goal I can conceive of. I want to have children who can carry on my spiritual legacy and see the end of each day as the start of a new one, and the end of each life as the start of a new one. I want to have a wife/soulmate who can I share my ups and downs with, who I can grow with. We will both be the sunlight that the other reaches towards, opening our leaves so that we can bask in each others' love, if only for awhile. I want to share my gifts with people and in turn be blessed by being able to see their awesome gifts and talents. I want my soul and ego to shed its isolated shell and open up the greatness that exists in every mind. It may hurt sometimes, and it may even kill me, but nothing worth having need come easy or free.

If I die tomorrow, that's okay. Granted, there are many things I'd like to accomplish first, but I'll find new things in my new existence. If I die 60 years from now, almost 80 and having lived 10 years longer than I predict I will, great. Hopefully those years were filled with all the ups and downs that make the human experience so wonderful and so frightening. Either way, when my mind's eye closes on this life and dreams before I move on to another, I want my last dreams of my old life to be filled with memories of the wonder of this one. Then, as I near my new genesis, the new day on my unending reality, I want them to fade into something new and unforeseen. That way, when I open my new eyes upon an unknown reality, my old memories won't hold me back as I tear into this new reality. Rather, like all things, they'll hang at the center of my soul, waiting for that inevitable day in eternity when they too, like flowers waiting for spring, will be able to bloom again.

Random Ramblings of No Significant Significance

Though I avoid randomly talking about my life here because I prefer to remain topical, sometimes I just can't help but revert to ego-centrism here. So forgive me please, as today, I talk about my summer, the present, and looking to the future.

I spent all summer working 10-15 hours a day, 5-6 days a week at Busch Gardens as a supervisor in one of the food shops. For whatever reason, I thoroughly enjoyed the job. I loved the people I got to work with to death. From day one I started off with some vivacious and energetic Filipino and Thai workers. Later in the summer they were replaced by a number of Polish, Russian and eventually Turkish workers. I worked with a broad variety of people that included high school and college-aged Americans. It's the kind of job diversity you have a hard time finding in many places in the country.

More than that, I found the work very satisfying. I got to feel like I improved on a number of things during the summer. When Zuzana (a Slovakian co-worker of mine from the previous year) arrived, we worked as co-supervisors to make improvements in the shop that needed to be made last year. We set up routines that had never been established before, as well as determined a method of doing orders that resulted in us not running out of stuff all the time (which was sadly the case last year). I was always able to set goals and work hard to reach them.

Most of all, I loved the weird social interactions I was able to participate in due to my job. There were the random conversations with customers that came with being a cashier, there were the talks with guests that buy beer (for whatever reason, beer-purchasing guests are more inquisitive and talkative...oh wait...), and there were times when I had to handle irate guests. The greatest social interactions were the ones with my co-workers. I had more fun with some of these people than I'd had in years. Going to the international village (where all of Busch Gardens international workers lived) was always fun, especially since all the Russian and Filipino workers were absurd chain smokers and drinkers.

The day to day occurences within the park always lent themselves to random and new scenarios creating a work environment that always had something new to offer. My work never felt dull or repetitive because I could always find something new and interesting to do each day. I learned how to run and manage things that extended beyond my duties as a supervisor. In many ways I became an odd sort of errand boy at times, running random errands that had no relation to the functioning of my shop. I ultimately didn't mind as it afforded me an opportunity to learn how to do new things and meet even more people in the park.

Now, as I sit here back at school, I miss the physical exhaustion that I was rewarded with every day. One of my favorite and weird little thrills was working 13 hours and then sleeping for 4 hours before working another 12. I learned to live through exhaustion, but I also learned to love exhaustion. In exhaustion, I found some quiet from my ceaselessly noisy mind. I also just felt very satisfied after a long day of work. Most days now, I feel board and useless, lacking any immediate task with which to occupy myself. I'm excited about returning next summer. Even though that job never paid that much (at least not enough for how much effort I put into it), it was a great experience for me.

Since getting back to school, I decided to add a major in Hotel, Tourism and Management. Coupled with my philosophy degree, I have quite a deal more job opportunities that will be available to me after I leave college. I'm excited at the prospect of being able to work even more in the future, but I'm also frightened by the fact that for the first time in over a year, I no longer just want to teach philosophy. A part of me wants to work for a business running certain operations in the service industry. I couldn't tell you why this excites me, but it does. Looking to the future, I have the opportunity to make money by working with and over people in an effort to help them form self-sufficient teams. I want to establish certain things so that I can create good models of customer service. Ultimately, I want every guest who comes through my establishment to leave feeling like they had the greatest quality possible.

I've gone from an aspiring academic to a semi-aspiring academic with ambitions of real work in a real industry. Though the thought disturbs me to some extent, I'm excited and can't wait to start taking classes in my major.

Random rambling done, insignificant significance not yet signified...or something. Beats the hell out of me, it's 2:30a.m. and I'm going to bed. Good night/morning.

Is the Debate over God Worth It?

Seriously consider this question: Is the debate over God's existence worth it? Or rephrased, is it really worth it to argue for or against God's existence? More importantly, is the debate over the nature of God worth it? Before you get offended by these questions, bear in mind that there is an important dilemma surrounding these questions.

Here is what I want to ask you all. When wars are started over basic things such as a disagreement over the nature of God and who God thinks is right, you have to ask if the debate is worth it when millions of people die for it? Realistically, I don't know how anyone with any real sense of moral integrity can value a debate about God over the lives of the people that God supposedly created. At least according to the Judeo-Christian and maybe Muslim tradition (I don't know overly much about Islam), God created man in his image. If he created people in his image, I doubt he wants people to kill each other in his name. After all, if God is benevolent and omniscient, then whether or not humans get the ideas right are irrelevant. A truly good God should only want good effort and the strongest attempt at a moral life as is possible.

Wars over religion are stupid, no matter what. Whenever one culture or religion begins to attack or fight with another one just because of differences in belief, a serious tragedy has occurred. If anything could make God cry, I think it'd be petty conflicts over differences in belief. We are all humans born forth from the same planet, no matter what religion we are. Unless you subscribe to some belief that aliens deposited humans here (which though possible is only fractionally so), we all came from the same soil, from the same life-giving earth. To kill each other over different beliefs about God and religion or even lifestyle is just stupid and tragic. If I subscribed to the anthropomorphic version of God, I would imagine him shedding tears at how his children are destroying each other.

We are too inclined to conflict, to war. Some cultures have managed to avoid excessive violent tendencies. The Hindus have existed in their own subcontinent without ever trying to expand out of it. It has survived multiple invasions and attempted cultural assimilations and has never once attempted real retribution. Only in recent years as Muslims and Christians continue to try to crush their culture and replace it with their own have there been violent retaliations. This is expected though; punch somebody enough times and they deserve to hit back. This does not mean that Hindus are perfect, but there is something to be learned from them. They happily assimilate other religious beliefs into their cultural system, while other religions reject everything they have to say. How come we, as humans, are not listening to each other? This becomes only more tragic when blood is spilled because of this.

If religion can only lead to contention and strife, then it's not worth it. I don't believe that religion inevitably leads to conflict. There is the possibility for peace between religions, but only when each person values another's religion as much as they value their own. In fact, you have to believe that they are as justified and as correct as you are before you can claim to be giving their religion proper and fair treatment. If you fail to do this, you are tarnishing your religion, and should take your failings elsewhere. Though you can't succeed at this immediately, the effort needs to be present. If you're not even trying, then you are failing to love other people like your God loves you. In order to be worthy of the God within and the God who made us, you have to be willing to love your neighbor and his beliefs more than your own. Until then, we will be nothing other than failures to the godliness that God instilled in us.

I personally do not believe in an antropomorphized version of God. I don't believe it's impossible, I just don't hold it is a belief in my personal life. I relied too much on God as an agent in my life, when I am supposed to be my own agent for action. God is meant to be a source of strength, not a being to give you what you want or fix your life for you. Part of our free will is the ability to make our own choices and do our own actions. No God who truly wants us to grow up could ever live our lives for us. That would be a kind of death for us, and God wanted us to have life. I relied on and prayed to much to the human God. That was a personal failing. I imagine God more as the total sum of all possibilities, the whole of reality made manifest. The concept of a conscious God is no longer present in my thought processes. Consciousness was too limited, and God is eternal. I personally subscribe more to the idea that God is everything, except I don't call it God, I call it eternity or reality, and I don't worship it. I feel blessed to be a part of the ceaseless process of reality, but I will live my life without the expectation of someone coming to save me (that was a personal fault by the way).

Anyways, the next time you feel compelled to engage in a religious debate, trying to prove whose conception of God is the best, remember that you're likely causing more problems than good. God needs no champion; he's God. His existence and power are not belittled or weakened by people disbelieving, so no matter what your views are about the objective truth about God, remember that fighting over it is pointless. If your God is truly God, he will remain God no matter what you do. Make yourself worthy of that God by spreading the only thing that a good God could truly want: peace and love (and peace and love does not mean spreading your religion, it means spreading the good of humanity). Once you have achieved that, then you have found the God within, and will then see the God without. If you value the future of humanity, please, please make this your most important of goals. If this is not achieved, many people will continue to die.