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Jan. 23rd, 2011 03:06 pm
Spirituality and such-like.
Conventional wisdom is that the older you get, the more conservative and traditionally-spiritual you become. The teenaged atheist moves on to become the middle-aged Christian, or Buddhist, or whatever flavor of "spiritual" they prefer. I'd like to be spiritual. Really, I would. But I'm not.
The older I get, the more convinced I am that there is no deity of any kind, that the universe is an accident and people are just electricity held suspended in meat. We have created a culture, and that's wonderful--but when we die, that's it. I don't believe in a "better world," I don't think anything happens to us when we die except that we're over with--and that really doesn't bother me.
Of course, I don't want to End. I want to be immortal. I want to see what the world is like 100, or 1000, or even 10000 years from now. But I'm not going to. Even if I'm wrong, and reincarnation exists, that won't be ME, not really, so it's moot, anyway. Who cares if a portion of my "soul," whatever that is (and no, I honestly don't believe in the concept of a soul, either), lives on, if I have no memories of being Michael Johnston? I don't. It's essentially meaningless.
As is, in my opinion, life. There is no "plan," there is no great clockwork running the universe, beyond the basic and fundamental forces of physics. And I do not believe there needed to be any designer. The idea that anything in existence had to be designed in order to exist is grounded in a fundamental error of perception on our part. Plenty of things were "invented" by accident--why not the universe itself? The fact that it exists does not necessitate the existence of any kind of plan.
When bad things happen, it's not because God has a lesson for you, or because Satan is screwing with you, but because, you know, shit happens. It's often painful, and it's never, ever fair. Assholes make millions and are famous while genuinely wonderful people labor in years and never get the recognition they deserve. Innocent children die of cancer. Good writers never get published. The universe is not so much "unfair" as it is "impartial." It simply doesn't care. Shit gets handed to everyone, without any judgment of who deserves what.
And that's ok. Because I see the world as essentially unfair and uncaring, I can deal with the crap that I have to without getting bogged down in the kind of navel-gazing many people fall prey to. It doesn't matter why something bad happens (and I'm only speaking here of things outside my control--if I spend all my money, it matters how and why I did that, but if I get cancer, there's no point in wondering why, just in dealing with it however I can), it only matters that it did, and I have to cope. As J. Michael Straczynski had one of his characters say:
I can't disagree.
The older I get, the more convinced I am that there is no deity of any kind, that the universe is an accident and people are just electricity held suspended in meat. We have created a culture, and that's wonderful--but when we die, that's it. I don't believe in a "better world," I don't think anything happens to us when we die except that we're over with--and that really doesn't bother me.
Of course, I don't want to End. I want to be immortal. I want to see what the world is like 100, or 1000, or even 10000 years from now. But I'm not going to. Even if I'm wrong, and reincarnation exists, that won't be ME, not really, so it's moot, anyway. Who cares if a portion of my "soul," whatever that is (and no, I honestly don't believe in the concept of a soul, either), lives on, if I have no memories of being Michael Johnston? I don't. It's essentially meaningless.
As is, in my opinion, life. There is no "plan," there is no great clockwork running the universe, beyond the basic and fundamental forces of physics. And I do not believe there needed to be any designer. The idea that anything in existence had to be designed in order to exist is grounded in a fundamental error of perception on our part. Plenty of things were "invented" by accident--why not the universe itself? The fact that it exists does not necessitate the existence of any kind of plan.
When bad things happen, it's not because God has a lesson for you, or because Satan is screwing with you, but because, you know, shit happens. It's often painful, and it's never, ever fair. Assholes make millions and are famous while genuinely wonderful people labor in years and never get the recognition they deserve. Innocent children die of cancer. Good writers never get published. The universe is not so much "unfair" as it is "impartial." It simply doesn't care. Shit gets handed to everyone, without any judgment of who deserves what.
And that's ok. Because I see the world as essentially unfair and uncaring, I can deal with the crap that I have to without getting bogged down in the kind of navel-gazing many people fall prey to. It doesn't matter why something bad happens (and I'm only speaking here of things outside my control--if I spend all my money, it matters how and why I did that, but if I get cancer, there's no point in wondering why, just in dealing with it however I can), it only matters that it did, and I have to cope. As J. Michael Straczynski had one of his characters say:
You know, I used to think it was awful that life was so unfair. Then I thought, wouldn't it be much worse if life were fair, and all the terrible things that happen to us come because we actually deserve them? So, now I take great comfort in the general hostility and unfairness of the universe.
I can't disagree.