The Purpose of Introspection

Let's face it. Introspection frequently sucks. When we attempt to delve deep into the inner workings of our own psyche, figuring out what makes our minds tick, we often discover things we'd rather pretend don't exist. For many problems there are deep-rooted memories, and for many emotions there are often seemingly irrational and stupid things at their root. We feel embarassed about some of the things that we realize inhabit the vast expanse of our minds. Moreover, we often confront the beast we prefer to believe does not exist: our flaws.

Our character flaws are what makes us human, but they are also what cause serious problems in the world. A character flaw in one person can lead to them abusing another human being, while a character flaw in another person can lead to genocide. Our character flaws represent dynamic and major parts of our personalities, as they play a great impact than we'd like to think. We cannot just pretend they don't exist. Though it may hurt, our flaws are too important to go unrecognized, and so we have to realize our flaws if we are to ever improve on them.

Given that, introspection serves at least one obvious use: it is a self-diagnosis of our own flaws, one that allows us to potentially work on a cure. Though we may never fully fix our flaws, it is the effort to improve them that distinguishes great human beings from normal human beings. Fixing our flaws can be painful, because they are usually situated at some pivotal point within the massive, tangled mess of our minds. They become points of concentration, connected to vast numbers of strands on that web, connecting themselves to many parts of our minds. These flaws unfortunately find expression in our daily lives when they manifest themselves through the mental processes and thoughts to which they are connected. We may never fully remove that knot from our minds, but we can begin to untangle it, severing as many of its connections as possible.

Introspection is the beginning of a long and possibly endless path towards self-improvement. Just as you can't fully repair an old house from the outside, so is the mind impossible to fix externally. The agent for causation for mental improvement must come from within, and much of the work must be done internally to fix and refortify one's mental infrastructure, just as one must enter the house in order to fix its supports. The catalyst must be self-created and self-sustained, though it can be the result of external forces. Ultimately though, the bulk of the effort must come from within a person or else the endeavor will go nowhere.

I'm ruthless when it comes to looking inside myself. I am possessed of a fiercely analytical mind at times, and this analytical capacity can be used to relentlessly and ferociously criticize people. I avoid using my own horrible thought processes on people as much as possible, but the end result is that these processes become devoted to self-evaluation instead. I often imagine that many of my self-esteem issues come from the most painful and critical voice I ever hear: my own. The danger of damaging yourself is great when you look at your own mind. I sunk into a painful depression over the last few months due in large part to the unending self-criticisms that I launched at myself in response to external events. Though I'm getting better in recent days, I suffer from relapses where I tear apart my mental flesh, causing all the joy to bleed out of my mind for days at a time.

This risk of introspection is always present, but it's necessary. Like any worthwhile endeavor, there is no easy way, no path without hazards and potential losses. In the end though, the goal is usually worth it. If I have to suffer periodically in order to more greatly understand myself and become a better person for myself and others, it is worth it. Though we always want external evaluation, in the end, the ultimate judge of our minds is ourselves, and nothing will ever change that. Introspection, though painful, is worth the risk because when we begin to know ourselves, we begin to truly know other people, thus becoming the truly good people we are meant to be.

Ruthless Introspection

The world is awash in a cosmic twilight, and as I look up at the sky sometimes, I become quietly aware of beginning and the eventual end of our universe. Change is the only constant in our universe, and as paradoxical as that seems (for change implies chaos, and this does not imply consistency, however, change changes consistently), perceived change is the only thing guaranteed in reality. With every change that initiates a new beginning comes a change that shifts toward a perceived an end. In truth, there are no beginnings or ends, just change.

I'm sure I've probably written about this before, but it's an omnipresent and recurring theme in the background noise of my mind. Occasionally I have poignant reminders of this very basic truth, with recent events in my life serving to reinforce this simple fact. It's an unfortunate state of affairs sometimes, but it's life. Much of the pain I've felt in the last three to four months comes from my inability to change in a meaningful way relative to that of my peers. I've made great changes in the last 3 years, changes that have lead me to become absurdly introspective, sometimes to the point where I'm too self-aware to even function with a modicum of normality in my daily life.

My capacities for analysis are increasing day by day, and at the expense of sounding like an arrogant and pretentious prick, I do feel that occasionally, in leaps and bounds, my intelligence grows considerably. The unfortunate side effect of this is my inability to function socially. With as much plain honesty as I can possibly muster, this much I know about myself to be true: I am an extremely shy person, often to the point of exuding some kind of air of creepiness; I scare people and I know it. I'm put-offish because of my timidity, and my lack of initiation in starting conversations with people usually conveys the message that I'm unfriendly. In soothe, I am extremely friendly, open, and generally a very caring person, though it's obvious why my temerity is easily misconstrued. I do little to help others abolish these absurdities.

It's also worth mentioning that I am a rather boring person. Unless you're interested in the kind of stuff I talk about, which generally ranges from topics concerning philosophy and religion to whatever random thoughts that blossom in my mind, I am boring to the point of tears. Though my creativity borderlines greatness on occasion, I rarely succeed at transforming the progeny of my hyperactive imagination into a coherent and interesting sentence or conversation. If my writings are any good, then they are the only thing representative of this potentially brilliant facet of my mind, because everything else in my external presentation probably gives most the impression that I suffer from some kind of dysfunctional stupidity (perhaps I do; in this day and age, it's hard to ever really know).

Now for the ruthlessly critical but realistic assessment of me as an individual. I frequently feel like I ignore many of my pressing issues, using the occasional positive to help me ignore my problems. I used to feel bad about what happened between Faith and I, but I realized that it was probably allowing me to be too happy when there was much I should have been devoting more of my time to. Sure, I felt a genuine kind of love for the first time in my life, and it echoes with a quiet consonance in the back of my mind today, despite how far the thing has fallen. Last summer and this fall were a wonderful time for me. My mental equanimity and my emotional joy was at an all-time high, and though I suffered from some confusion for awhile around October, my general mood was one saturated with a quietly optimistic hope.

One of the greatest changes in my life hit me with the full force of a cosmic epiphany that leaves the mind castrated of rationale and composure. It was one of the most confusing times of my life, not to mention emotionally stressful in a way that has not yet been rivaled. Though the successive bouts with depression that I've had were probably started or caused at some deeper level by the events that resulted from the whole Faith incident, recent stem from deeper issues within the core of my being. The sadness that resulted from the whole mess with Faith is probably akin to a bug eating the leaves of a plant. The bug will cause significant problems if it eats the leaves more quickly than the plant can grow them. This is survivable though. If the sickness comes from within though, from the plant's locus of life, then the chances of enduring the sickness become more slim. With the mind and body as the two ultimately powerful forces that coalesce to form our being, it is clear that they claim dominion over our life force and therefore have the greatest influence over it.

My problems are my problems, and it's hard for me to say whether I actually deserve to move past them. Sometimes I feel like I don't try hard enough to do good for others. I've had so much good in my life that I owe quite a bit back. Social ineptitude aside, I've never been remiss of anything (unless I chose to be lacking something). I can't really complain about my problems because any issues or flaws that I have are self-created and self-sustained. If I am to maintain at least a pretense of seriously analyzing the inner workings (or lack thereof) within my mind, then I must at least recognize that my problems were created by myself. Sometimes it hurts to make your ego endure the full force of something, but in reality, it's better to suffer what you cause and enjoy what should be enjoyed (sorry, I know some of these things aren't flowing very well anymore - I'm falling asleep but I want to finish this entry so I may drift off and take a brief respite from my thoughts and from reality).

Though certain external factors have obviously been the prevalent sources and stimuli for change in my life, it is obvious that meaning today comes more from my internal thoughts and sense of self rather than some collective consciousness of a denomination of people. I chose how I would react to those factors, despite my vague inklings of what they could make me. I should be realistic though; at the age of 14 I can scarcely have been expected to be able to rationalize and look this far ahead at myself. Now I look at myself years from now and already understand all too well the kind of person I will become. I won't discuss what I will become, because I'd prefer to keep from being too overly pessimistic, and ignorance of another person's crucial demands is just not right.

Life is dwindling to the quietude that pervades the silence that hangs in my room. I have become accustomed to the quiet, and for no particular utility either. The world is a crazy place, and I'd be foolish to imagine my role in it as being even as consequential as dog crap; in fact, depending on your choice of religion, human beings are but an insignificant ripple in the infinite ocean of eternity. Knowing this, it's hard to assign any special significance to my ego, because we are all part of the unceasing ebb and flow of some eternal tide, our deaths rendering us mere detritus afloat in the waters, recycled into something new. Deep down I feel a kind of love for myself, for my god-pattern, but as a human I'm a social creature. My ego is a dynamic thing that results from a composite of different things, both internal and external, and therefore my self-confidence and feelings of self-worth can never be wholly self-created and self-sustained.

Sooner or later I'm going to have to strengthen my sense of self-worth, but I can't do it alone. Hopefully, if there is anything of real merit in my mind and spirit, then I will shine enough to earn the respect and commendations of others. I don't need to receive the highest of accolades, just a little positive reinforcement every now and then. There is no hope though if I do not take action, for I must be the agent of change in my life (because I can no longer expect anyone else to catalyze the necessary changes in my life). If I have any greatness within me, then my time may come, but I will have to be willing to make the requisite actions. There can be no more waiting, no more expecting things to sort out. Life has waited long enough, and I can no longer wait and expect the universe to work out to my end. With all of this said and this especially lengthy blog entry concluded, have a good day.

A Caveat

I figure that it's only fair that I explain a few important things.

For starters, in case you haven't realized, I'm something of a social failure, and the primary reason I have time to sit aroudn and ponder all of this generally useless information (useless if you're anyone other than me) is because I don't do much else. Seriously, I'm an RA (Resident Advisor) for a dormitory at my university (James Madison University), and that's the extent of my social life outside of the activities I do with my small number of friends. Yeah, I basically do nothing. Everyone I know is either involved with organizations or know a fair number of people or have some kind of real social life. I'm too much of a social failure to do much, and so I spend most of my time sitting in my room either flittering about on the internet attempting to avoid doing homework or watching television. Honestly, that is the extent of my life.

The reason I am explaining this is so that you can understand who I am and take everything I say with a grain of salt. Because I spend so much time withdrawn from others, I spend a lot more time analyzing people rather than participating in life with them. This tendency often leads to being judgmental, and from there I have become a sanctimonious asshole. If you've read any of the entries in this blog or know me, you'll know that I am a sanctimonious jerk who acts like he's better than everyone else. That is obviously not the case with me. There are few things I'm better than, and people don't fall under that.

The sad truth is that I bore people to tears, and if you're reading this now you're probably crying. More horrible than the fact that writings like this exist is the fact that people like me exist to make them and have not yet died in some horrible way. These entries probably waste perfectly good server space that could be used for something a billion times more useful (like links to more porn sites). I'm not going to lie and pretend I'm not a boring person, because the sad but obvious truth is that I'm about as interesting as a piece of gravel. The most excitement you will get out of anything related to me is either through the much-deserved derisions about me or imagining what the world would be like if I would only stop talking.

Other things to know about me: I think I'm a good person. Clearly this is not the case. A good person is someone who tries to do good for other people, who puts others' welfare before their own (not necessarily all the time, just some of the time). If I were a good person, I'd realize that my presence is generally a mood killer and that I annoy people. I basically need to back off and let people live their lives without me making it even more annoying. The world is a beautiful place and I'm all too often the taint that ruins everything. Any social activity by me is usually or probably painful for anyone involved. I'm the kind of person who when you're around me, you hope to whatever God you believe in that I will not open my mouth. To be honest, I can't blame you. I would hope the same thing. Good also means being able to act on what you know is right, and since I'm still alive, I'm clearly not acting on what I know to be right. There would be much more joy in this world if I were not blotting out the sun with the horrendous shadow cast by insignificance and boringness.

I'm not bothered posting these rants on this blog because like everything I write, it is rarely read (and for good reason too). For me to expect someone to read this is like expecting the ocean to give up its tide; it's not going to happen. I can more or less say whatever I want in this ridiculous entry because nobody is truly going to read it, and if they do, they'll at least know after this entry that there is such a thing as evil in the world (evil being the fact that I've been permitted to live all this time).

What I'm trying to impress upon you from this entry is that everything I say is worthless. My usage of big words is probably some sad attempt to bolster my own self-esteem by trying to believe that I'm smart. Truth: my writings here and everywhere else, and my biggest regret is that I infringe on the joy of other people. People like me have low self-esteem because they have nothing to esteem themselves for. What are my positive strongpoints? Nothing really. Maybe my best strong point is my inability to make friends because it least gives hope for justice in the world by showing that not everyone needs to have their lives ruined by my presence. So can I really blame anyone? No. I should probably be burning in some kind of metaphorical hell for all of this.

I'm a philosophy and religion major (which means I'm retarded), and I have aspirations of one day becoming a professor for some university. Let's be realistic though: I should never be allowed to teach. It would be an injustice to my students and to my peers, largely because I'm too horrible at being a human being to really do much of anything for anybody. I wish I could believe that I was more interesting, more kind, more fun to be around, but I don't. Dreams are reserved for those who have the capacity to achieve them, and since I don't have the ability to do any real work, I definitely do not deserve dreams. So despite all the lofty goals I've set for myself in life, the fame and knowledge I'd love to acquire, it's all bullshit (for me). My only real ambition should be an ambition to die, but sadly I can't control my instincts enough to make sure I die.

What you should draw from atrociously long entry is this: when you meet someone who is so boring that you'd rather shoot yourself than talk to them for about 3 minutes, run away. Chances are, they're me, and if it's me, you're day has just been ruined. I wish I could make things better, even if it was just jumping in a meat grinder. Anyways, I'm tired and pissed off at myself for daring to believe I'm intelligent, for thinking that I have good ideas. I have none of those things; all I have is my stupidity and my inability to be good enough to other people in the ways they need most.

Philosophy is Dieing; Let's Finish the Job

While everything posted in this blog is representative of only my personal views and no academic findings or research, I feel like I can make whatever claims I feel like as long as I acknowledge that they are my beliefs. If you don't like what I say, fine. Read no further. There's nothing that compels you to read this blog, save personal interest or boredom.

Anyways, philosophy is dieing, and religion is losing its humanity (which is kind of like dieing). Together, the two are losing their grip on the human mind, their utility for the average person. While philosophy is dieing because of its failure to possess significant meaning for the average person and for its increasing focus on abstract theories that are absolutely meaningless for the average person, religion is beginning to fade due to its instutitional decadence and increasing focus on divisions rather than unity that most religions aspire to create.

Philosophy is dieing, and its time to put the old dog to rest. Shoot it, and terminate this aging enterprise. Burn the house that the fathers of philosophy built, and from the smoldering embers, build a new foundation that concerns itself with making issues relevant to humanity. Philosophy was once a subject held in higher regard; now it is something reserved for a handful of devoted academics. I love philosophy, and I have aspirations of becoming a philosophy professor and an active participant in the philosophical community. But I want things to change. I want the philosophical community to become the greatness it should be, a study where the concerns of humanity mesh with the day-to-day lives of human beings. It should attempt to help people create their own worldviews in such a way that philosophy takes personal meaning for them.

The same should be true for religion. Religion is frequently an organized or detailed way of increasing one's personal connectedness with their concepts of the divine. It should also possess a community aspect, in the sense that it should bring people together in their endeavors for a greater understanding of their perceived ultimate reality. Community growth deteriorates when religion becomes more of a mechanism for control and an excuse for individual stupidity. Religion is supposed to be a personal experience involving individual revelation combined with community growth and guidance. When people fail to think for themselves and they let other people control more and more of their thought process, the religious experience becomes very political, one in which the objective becomes one human being (or beings) controlling other people. Religion isn't to blame here though, people are.

Any concept can become distorted through its intercourse with reality, giving birth to a conceptual confusion, a loss of meaning, a perversion of the beauty that permeates every inch of our world. Religion and philosophy can represent human thought at its greatest, showing two ends of a conecptual spectrum. Religion shows humanity's endeavor to discover its place in the cosmos, and align itself with the greater powers that seemed to have created it. Philosophy represents humanity's attempts to apply the patterns it sees in the world to everyday experiences, ultimately seeking to create a coherent and logical picture of reality. Together, they show that humans want to have a personal connectedness with the potential divine all while maintaining and including the seemingly obvious logic that dictates the patterns of our world.

It's time to sweep out century old decadence and start over again. This does not mean abandoning all the greatness that philosophy has accumulated over the millenia, but it does mean creating a new foundation for the philosophical community. The world has plenty of worthless drivel to fill its volumes of literature; it's time to restore philosophy to its former greatness. Let's reconnect it with the humanity that created it, and thus return it to its former glory. Philosophy should not be the hobby or interest of just academics, it should be the tool by which the masses confront and understand the world. Philosophy should be the literacy of reality, meaning that the most philosophical mind is the most literate mind, able to read and understand reality like a book.

Religion does not need to be destroyed. It just needs reform and rejuvenation. Humanity needs to reclaim its religion for itself, and take back the power over their souls. Our souls are our own, and no other human being can take that away from us. While someone can claim power over God, if they're human (which we all are), then the only power they have over our cosmic self is that which we give them. Take back your power, and recreate religion in your image. Share that image with your fellow travelers, and reform religion in your image, abolishing the power dimension that has seized it in recent centuries. Religion is human imagination and emotion at its greatest, but when distorted, it can depict humanity and all its desires at their worst. Restore it, and you will create a vision of humanity at its finest. Fail to, and you may live to witness humanity at its worst. Modern-day crises in the Middle East and in our own country have proven that while all religions contain a perfect beauty at their core, the practice often corrupts. The practice manifests itself from human belief merged with reality, and careful attention is often required to prevent the fall from grace that ritual and religion have taken lately. The problem is not irreparable though, and with time and effort, things can and will improve. People only need to want.

There is much greatness and potential in philosophy and religion, but for everything great, there is an equally great potential for corruption or loss of meaning. Philosophy needs to reconnect with the human beings that gave rise to it, and cease to be the specialized subject that it has become. Similarly, people need to seize the reigns of power in religion back from the few who manipulate them with it, and restore religion back to its beautiful and wondrous residence in the hearts and souls of people. We are all responsible in some way for the corruption of religion, be you atheist or faithful devotee of some faith. The cure lies in the actions of us all; no one person can hope to salvage what lies in the collective hearts of humanity. As soon as we all begin to fix these things, humanity itself will improve, shining like the bright star of cosmic genius that we are. There is no evil in the world save that which is self-created, and the greatest evil right now is letting two of the greatest self-created entities in the world decay. Humans cannot create science, they only discover it; they cannot create math, they only find it; religion and philosophy however, issue forth from human experience and our own inner greatness. Abandon the failures of the past, but don't forget them. Let's restore these to their positions of greatness among human thought. There is only good to gain and bad to lose.

Good night, and I apologize if you actually read all of this.

The Theistic Atheist

I have to be honest. I generally loathe whatever religiously related words that I hear issue forth from an atheist's mouth. More often than not I find that what they tell me infuriates for its frequent lack of intelligence or personal belief. As much as I hate to generalize, I'll risk it when I say that too many atheists are possessed by unfounded beliefs that usually represent an adherence to a fad rather than a set of beliefs resulting from personal experience and thought. I respect people who have arrived at their atheistic beliefs as long as they have a justified set of reasons for believing so (don't ask me to get into what constitutes justification - my epistemology class is frustrating). Unfortunately, this has rarely been the case.

I generally do not agree with atheism, however, lately, my beliefs can be characterized in such a way that I would essentially seem an atheist. My dissolution of a humanized (anthropomorphic) God with regards to my personal life gives credence to that statement. Things are not always what they seem, though. As past entries (though somewhat outdated) have indicated, I believe in eternity, which in essence acknowledges the unending ebb and flow of reality, a sort of perpetual tide in the fabric of existence. Though under my views anything is possible (including the simultaneity of God existing and not existing, which though paradoxical is an absolute necessity in possibility when adhering to a belief in infinite potential), for reasons of personal motivation and day-to-day activities, I choose to not bestow any significance to the notion of a humanistic and personal God.

Just to give you all a brief understanding of these reasons, I shall explain in as few terms as I can. It's easier to expect more out of life when you believe in a benevolent God who occasionally does favors for human beings. The moment you stop praying to this God, the moment you stop hoping for Him to effect the changes in your life that YOU should be doing, the sources of your motivations and the stimuli needed to often enact your own change becomes much more tangible. Moreover, it was easier for me to lay back and not be active in life, because I had this dim sort of hope that all things would be made good by God. While I don't believe that God can't interact with my reality to make certain things come to be, I do believe that God would appreciate us acting to our maximum potential for reasons relating to ourselves and other human beings. God doesn't want us to do good because He said so; He wants us to do good for other people because it's a sign of love, and love is the hardest of all human emotions to truly feel and accept. According to Christian conceptions of God, we were made in His image, and God wants us to act like the divine being our origins suppose us to be. Divinity does not come from expecting rewards for our good deeds, but rather, from accepting that often no good can come to you personally sometimes when you do good for others.

For me, not holding a human God with any real significance is a sign of me stepping up to accept the personal responsibility that I may have shied away from in the past. Life becomes harder to bear sometimes when take ultimate responsibility for all of your actions, and don't always believe in the possibility of a brighter tomorrow. Despite that, it gives greater power to your actions, greater meaning to your deeds. When you become the author of your actions and an active participant in the creation of your destiny (rather than relying on some sort of cosmological intervention to do that for you), life takes greater force in your own mind. Reality becomes more tangible, more real, and takes new meaning.

There are days when it is hard. In recent months I have gone through some of my most mentally stressful times. I felt something in the line of real love for the greatest of my friends, and having spent a stretch of wonderful time with her, she rejected me when I made my thoughts and feelings vocal (rather than physical like they had been previously, and I don't mean physical in the sexual sense). I was in and out of depression daily, suffering from the worst feelings I've felt in my life. I'm only just now starting to feel like I might actually be coming out of it to some extent. God cannot negate the fact that this happened, or if He can, He's not going to. History is testament to that fact. Though many traditions do believe God to be a God of history, nowhere in that history does God ever negate the consequences of one's actions; God just seems to participate in those outcomes, usually stimulating human action to take some intended path. Either way, humans still seem to have been presented with a choice. So belief or disbelief in God, my actions are my own, my consequences mine in some fashion or another. I can't sit around and expect God to mend things with the woman I loved; only my actions can one day fix it, or it may be impossible to mend it in the way that I most what.

When I say that I am a theistic atheist, I do not mean that I am an atheist or a theist. I mean that I believe in God, or at least Eternity. This eternity is not the creator of reality, it is reality. There was no creation, just a cosmological constant, a persistent and unending reality that covers all possibilities and probabilities simultaneously. So while I don't hold any kind of God with any kind of personal significance, I do believe in eternity, which is the self-causing cause. If not believing in the anthropomorphic God of most religious traditions makes me an atheist, then so be it. But don't even think you can get away with comparing me to contemporary atheists, because unlike most atheists, I do believe in a higher power, and that higher power is everything itself. I am a part of that power, and it is a part of me. I am not just an atheist; I'm a theist. Don't fall victim to the false dichotomies that stupidly segregate the intelligence and beauty in our world. I believe in God so much that I'm willing to disbelieve in order to make myself worthy of the God within, and so if you think that you can liken me to the average and ordinary atheist, you are sadly mistaken.

After an almost year-long hiatus, the Quasi-Philospher is back, and I return with some life experience and a number of revelations to carry me through at least a few more entries. To the nonexistent reader who has never read this and never will, I bid thee good night.