Hello fellow foolish humans,
It seems the world is in the proverbial shitter. I say proverbial because really most of this "shitter" stuff going on is trivial and/or somebody else's problem. ANYTHING going on in sports - the answer is "all of you morons shut the hell up and sit the fuck down". Problem solved. Rivers flooding in the midwest - tragic, yes. Donate money to the Red Cross, or if you really feel a need to help I'm sure they could use sandbaggers and volunteers for rebuilding. Join the Red Cross and volunteer for that disaster area.
More problems exist than this, and all of them are forcibly inserted into your brain by various news media. Wouldn't it be nice if people actually thought through these problems with a pragmatist viewpoint? The solution to every worry is to simply look at the problem in the mindset of "what can I do to help?" Frankly, the solution is very very often "practically speaking, Nothing". Myself, I have no money to give and no time to volunteer without VERY seriously subverting my college plans which I need to keep up a bit for financial reasons.
So, the question is, what can YOU do about Gas prices? The Iraq War? Controversy surrounding the Beijing Olympics? The answer is practically speaking, not much. Write a letter to your representatives and senators if you really care that much. Vote in November. And then, once you've got that done, STOP WORRYING. Turn off CNN. Shut off your computer. Grab a frisbee, or a book, or something else. The news media has turned sour, and while they still give factual information, they rather unfortunately give it over and over and over and over and over again until it is beat into your brain and they have nothing else they could fill the time with but their own gut feelings and opinions regarding news presented as facts.
In short, televisual news is full of fail and text is better.
TRH
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Friday, June 6, 2008
Personal Beliefs, or lack thereof
I have a friend who lists herself as Agnostic. I myself list myself as such as well. Funny thing about Agnosticism though. See, to call yourself Christian means you believe in the Jewish God, that your soul was saved two thousand years before your parents even met, that random Holy Spirit thing (Honestly, Brahma/The Force makes more sense than that one). To say that you are a buddhist means that you believe in the Noble Eightfold Path as a solution to the Four Noble Truths, all that. To say that you are an Atheist is the other end of the spectrum, to believe explicitly that there is no deity, higher power, great and all knowing intelligence, anything. Effectively, it is to believe that there is nothing to the universe beyond what we have noticed (and a few things we haven't quite noticed yet, but may mildly suspect, like Dark Energy, which is a whole other blogpost in itself.)
There is a wide area in between believing in one faith and dogmatic set, and believing in absolutely nothing. That spectrum, to me, is all agnosticism. Some call it spirituality without belief, some call it unknowingness. I call it apathy: I really don't give a crap whether or not there is a god. It doesn't concern me. If I die and there is nothing at all, then nothing happens, obviously. If I die and there is something there, then I'll simply argue that I lived my life as I wanted to and that while there may not be things I'm proud of, I don't believe I need to defend my lifestyle to anybody. I am a sentient thing capable of making choices for myself so far as I know, so if there does turn out to be a god then he/she/it is not better than me.
As a psychologist once told me, Agnosticism is a very humble choice because it's about admitting that you DON'T know. It's the idea of giving up any specific beliefs, accepting that it's as-yet unmeasurable whether or not there is a god (scientifically speaking), and that you don't need a religious institution to tell you how to live or save this "soul" thing. It's effectively saying that you don't know who's wrong or right and that you don't need to know.
So that's Agnosticism to me. Apathy. Don't know, don't care.
TRH
There is a wide area in between believing in one faith and dogmatic set, and believing in absolutely nothing. That spectrum, to me, is all agnosticism. Some call it spirituality without belief, some call it unknowingness. I call it apathy: I really don't give a crap whether or not there is a god. It doesn't concern me. If I die and there is nothing at all, then nothing happens, obviously. If I die and there is something there, then I'll simply argue that I lived my life as I wanted to and that while there may not be things I'm proud of, I don't believe I need to defend my lifestyle to anybody. I am a sentient thing capable of making choices for myself so far as I know, so if there does turn out to be a god then he/she/it is not better than me.
As a psychologist once told me, Agnosticism is a very humble choice because it's about admitting that you DON'T know. It's the idea of giving up any specific beliefs, accepting that it's as-yet unmeasurable whether or not there is a god (scientifically speaking), and that you don't need a religious institution to tell you how to live or save this "soul" thing. It's effectively saying that you don't know who's wrong or right and that you don't need to know.
So that's Agnosticism to me. Apathy. Don't know, don't care.
TRH
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