This is a 9/11 post. I'm just going to state up front that it is not my intention to provoke, incite, or offend anyone whose opinions differ from my own. The following is purely my analysis. My only purpose for writing this post is to ask any potential readers to THINK about their experiences concerning 9/11. That is all.
In the middle of the 21st century, American society was enraptured by the concept of equal rights due to the civil rights movement. The obsession with fairness has now become such a part of American society that we don't really question its derivative actions. It gives reinforcement to the term "politically correct".
Suffice to say, we'd like to think we could live in fairness.
But do we die in fairness?
9/11 has started a decade long tradition of national mourning that has been repeated every year by a media circus. A large and fitting memorial has been built over the ruins of the World Trade Center, a symbol of American perseverance and honor. We grieve the victims and heroes of that fateful day.
But what makes those particular victims special? Don't get me wrong, we should not forget those who lost their lives. But here's the simple fact:
People die. As the world turns around and you read this sentence, people die. They die from old age, heart attacks, car accidents, war, tragic attacks, etc.
People die. The only reason it has any depth, any importance worth remembering, is what the person did or died for. We can frame a martyr's death for a single event that defines and overrides the importance of any detail in their lives. We know Martin Luther King Jr. died for civil rights, but how many people know where he was born, or can say the name of his wife?
The death of a person is so particularly common that we can only remember those closest to us with emotional meaning. We hold a funeral for the death of loved ones, have a eulogy, and put flowers on their grave. Funerals happen every day, and the death of one person cannot be distinguished from the death of another unless we know the name, the life, and the cause of death.
So what makes the victims of 9/11 so special? What makes their deaths worth putting on TV once a year for an entire decade?
We mourn people because we want to remember them and come to turns with their departure. The more they were vital to your life, the more you grieve. It's easy to say that we grieve a person to honor their memory and for what they did while they were alive.
But the more you think about mourning, the more you realize how selfish it really is. The dead person is no longer here to give any input upon your suffering, so it can only benefit the people who mourn. To be frank, we mourn because it makes us feel better. It gives us emotional release and allows us to get over the grief. If it helps the dead person, we can't know.
So when the media circus descends on the 9/11 memorial, I'm surprised there isn't a rolling sidebar listing the names of the victims. What makes them more important than my brother? Why doesn't he get a memorial every single year?
The obnoxious truth is that remembering 9/11 is convenient. We need it to remind us of the reasoning behind the seemingly hopeless wars in the middle east, the destruction of the American economy, and put faith into our government and military servicemen. We need every reason to feel bad about what has transpired over the past decade. We need to force tears into our eyes to feel American.
Isn't it funny that we always expect the patriot to say he would die for his country, but not live for it?
Death is America's best obsession, and the wars it has gone through are sad, tragic affairs that become field days for the media circus. So why don't we have this kind of 9/11 coverage for the World Wars, Korea, or Vietnam? How many MILLIONS died in those conflicts? Why don't we have special spin coverage of the Gulf of Tonkin incident? How come nobody knows anything about the American military campaigns in the Middle East?
Time supposedly heals all wounds, but this media coverage is telling me that's just not going to happen. Let the families of the victims mourn without cameras in their faces. What I do not want is the same continuous coverage a decade or five after the event.
I thought the point of the memorial was to mourn and move on from the deaths. But if mourning 9/11 means not letting go, to have deaths shoved in everyone's faces constantly, then it's not helping anyone.
It's clear that this entire issue is very controversial, but the only thing I don't want is to continuously worship the death of innocent victims to be a continuous sign of patriotism. In my opinion, it's a morbid and disgusting addiction that cheapens the dead. This exploitation is a cheap and painful way to garner attention.
We should not be supporting martyrdom. It only encourages delusion in people with bad intentions. And frankly, it's a basis for encouraging terrorists to smash themselves into buildings and take innocent lives along with them.
An America that supports terrorism is not one I will live for. It sure is hell not one I'm going to die for.
The cycle needs to STOP.
Sunday, September 11, 2011
Saturday, September 10, 2011
86) Volunteer to Understand
My type of thinking music:
For a friend and my own sanity, I'd like to share with you a glimpse into some of my philosophical beliefs. I'll try to be reasonable (no guarantees).
A) The meaningless of life.
I've always been one to believe that philosophers and people curious about life were always lacking in a meaningful aspect of their lives. Maybe they were just overly curious. It saddens me to know that there are alot of lives in constant turmoil from trying to ask questions they can never really answer.
The longing to know information is very powerful. It can consume people as a dangerous obsession, that being able to understand might grant satisfaction. Luckily, people are smart enough to choose to be ignorant, or otherwise the phrase "ignorance is bliss" would carry little weight.
Which, in the end, explains my somewhat pessimistic view on life, this world, and the people in it. If understanding won't grant satisfaction or bliss, then it's safe to assume that there are simply things not worth understanding. That being said, many things are apt to be meaningless. I'm simply more inclined than my peers to believe that life may be meaningless.
Or to put it another way:
1) There are things we cannot understand.
2) What we cannot understand may be due to its property of being meaningless.
3) Life and existence may be subjectively incapable of being understood.
From 2 and 3:
4) Life and existence may be meaningless.
Let's ignore for a moment the numerous fallacies you could point out in this crude proof. Also notice I left in ambiguity by using the words "may be" in 2 and 3 instead of "is".
It is indeed a grim possibility I've come to believe in. With all the bad about humanity I've seen and written about it, I can't help but wonder if this way of thinking is indeed my own subconscious need for emotional satisfaction by understanding the meaningless behind meaning.
But that would mean that the meaning behind something meaningless has meaning, and I've just stumbled into a vicious regress.
Perhaps instead of fixating on the pessimistic feel of the glass of life being half full, I should wonder where the hell my sandwich is. Or if it exists at all.
B) Conceptional nonexistence.
Imagine for a second that the infinite universe theory is true. That besides our own world and universe, an infinite amount of other universes and worlds exist which account for every possible given scenario and variation. There are other worlds exactly like ours (down to the last molecule and timeline), worlds that are are slightly different (a world where Obama is not the current president), and worlds that are wildly different (filled without physics and inhabited by sentient cupcakes, etc.).
Given that these universes and worlds do in fact exist, we can assume they have validity in their presence and containing structures. In other words, we can assume that their philosophies, laws of nature, and overall meaning, etc. have validity and we would not be prohibited in comparing them to our own reality (assuming this is true, I have just proved validity by simply describing this fact).
In our world, murder is looked down upon (by most) because of ethical and moral standards we've set for ourselves and our societies. It is frowned upon to take a life that is sentient and living because we can associate feelings of guilt and shame for doing so.
Now, imagine another world where the concept of murder does not exist. Killing another person in this world does not have any moral, ethical, or legal consequences. It is as natural as breathing and there are no feelings associated with it. Nobody gains or loses anything from it. It simply is. There is no social stigma against killing. Here, you can choose to chainsaw the guy next to you and no one would even blink.
So from our standpoint, would we abhor killing in this alternate world, even though nobody there has any problem with it? Even though people in that world don't have the concept of murder?
What I'm trying to get at here is that our social rules, ethics, and laws exist according to the society and surroundings we grow up in. If we are taught that murder is wrong and accept that fact, we will regard it as true. However, what's important to understand is that these are concepts. Concepts are ideas that matter only if we give them coherence and existence. As such, morality involving right and wrong exist because we believe they exist.
So what's the problem with that? Concepts are non physical. They are in our minds. Humans simply made them up. There is no rule that says just because we believe in an idea and practice it, it is real and exists in the universe. It does not mean it has a real basis or is meaningful or important. If I tell you unicorns are real, you can believe that concept and give it life and meaning. But that does not mean unicorns exist. You simply wouldn't know. You can just accept it for what it is because it makes you feel better and helps you sleep at night.
The very same applies to morals. We don't follow them because we know without question that the universe tells us they are real and important. We follow them because we made them up and gave them meaning. We all follow them and acknowledge they are real because we believe they will make us happy and ordered. In a sense, all ideas and concepts are fiction. We are the authors, and we decided this is the story we will live by. Writing down the story on paper does not make it any more real if we choose not to give it meaning.
In the end, it might turn out that nothing exists. After all, physicality and existence are concepts. The words you read right now might not mean anything because none it might be real. We can't fathom what existence is because anything we use to describe it might not exist. There is no satisfiable metaphysical way to justify that reality is in fact real.
So in a way, existence does not exist because we have no way of knowing it exists.
My brain hurts. Good thing the concept of pain might not be "real".
C) The infinite marathon of fear.
Given that concepts might not exist, humans can create anything to be happy in reality. With a clean slate, we could imagine and live in a world where anything is possible if we choose to validate its concepts. We can create a society where we worship a color for half a day or require everyone to jump off a cliff when they become parents.
In our society, we have rules and morals that we follow because they make us orderly, happy, secure, and satisfied. However, it is a personal code. There is a different code for every person and society that exists in the world. You might think cursing is wrong, I might think it is right. It all depends on what set of morals and ethics you were raised on. Everyone has their own perceptions on life and how they choose to live it.
There is no hard and fast rule that everyone follows to make themselves happy and emotionally satisfied. We pick the set of rules we know and stick to them because they give us safety and emotional satisfaction. It justifies our lives and our existences. It allows us to have variations and differences of opinion. It allows us to live differently from the person next to us.
How would life be if we all had the same morals, ethics, and rules? A universal way of belief, some miracle truth that allowed us to coexist? Would we all act the same? Would we have eternal peace and harmony?
The truth is that society and its rules are lies, fiction that we create because we need order. It lets us believe that there is a plan, that there is meaning, that we have a purpose. It lets us escape the prospect of nothing. It is our way of defending against chaos. Chaos is uncontrolled, unpredictable, and unstable. Our fear of chaos far outstrips our fear of order.
That is why people begrudgingly accept governments that abuse them. They inherently know that the alternative is worse. Even if we choose to overthrow the current government, the end result is always the same: we simply create another government that was different from the former. It feels natural and safe to organize and order our lives. It is how we survive.
The problem is that it does not work.
Humans are not meant to be organized and orderly. We are animals and savages, no matter how much we pretend not to be. Elevating ourselves to be cultured and mannered to set up societies and governments does not eliminate murder, theft, or war. We create order because we do not trust ourselves. We live lives of hypocrisy and delusion that suppress what we were designed for. Humans are too unstable and random to control their emotions and actions. We are designed mentally and physically to be unable to control ourselves based on what happens around us.
If you are able to look past the rules and order, you will be able to find freedom. You are able to follow instincts and do as your humanity and physiology demands. That chaos is the zeal of anarchy that attracts so many people. Problem is, anarchy does not thrive because the people who fear chaos will always outnumber the people who don't.
To be truly free, you have to get over your fear of chaos and embrace its hold on what you cannot control about anything. You must let go of any fear or impulse against what you are. It is to understand that every controlling aspect about yourself does not matter and means nothing. That nothing might mean nothing. You have to able to embrace the human imperfections that go against your will to survive. You have to be able to accept that the price of freedom is the compromise of your safety. You might die.
Fear not death, and you shall be free.
It is a price many of us are unwilling to pay. It is impossible for many of us to simply unlearn all those centuries of ancestral experiences with law and order. After all, if your parents did not follow society and decided to be free and dead, you would never have been born.
It is my firm belief that the happiness we seek, the eternal satisfaction, lies in that deathly freedom. It is the freedom to do anything without rules or consequences, to accomplish your wildest dreams and fantasies without fear. Why else would I suggest an end to society? We shouldn't need society to restrict our search for bliss.
Regardless of whether you agree with me or not, the argument brings up a good question. What is ultimate satisfaction and happiness worth to you? Is it worth your life?
----------------------------------------
This was all a short glance into my misguided and fractured philosophy. Hope I made you think.
I sincerely thank you for taking the time to understand another person's perspective. If I'm lucky, I'll force you to do something I bet you rarely do:
Challenge your beliefs.
For a friend and my own sanity, I'd like to share with you a glimpse into some of my philosophical beliefs. I'll try to be reasonable (no guarantees).
A) The meaningless of life.
I've always been one to believe that philosophers and people curious about life were always lacking in a meaningful aspect of their lives. Maybe they were just overly curious. It saddens me to know that there are alot of lives in constant turmoil from trying to ask questions they can never really answer.
The longing to know information is very powerful. It can consume people as a dangerous obsession, that being able to understand might grant satisfaction. Luckily, people are smart enough to choose to be ignorant, or otherwise the phrase "ignorance is bliss" would carry little weight.
Which, in the end, explains my somewhat pessimistic view on life, this world, and the people in it. If understanding won't grant satisfaction or bliss, then it's safe to assume that there are simply things not worth understanding. That being said, many things are apt to be meaningless. I'm simply more inclined than my peers to believe that life may be meaningless.
Or to put it another way:
1) There are things we cannot understand.
2) What we cannot understand may be due to its property of being meaningless.
3) Life and existence may be subjectively incapable of being understood.
From 2 and 3:
4) Life and existence may be meaningless.
Let's ignore for a moment the numerous fallacies you could point out in this crude proof. Also notice I left in ambiguity by using the words "may be" in 2 and 3 instead of "is".
It is indeed a grim possibility I've come to believe in. With all the bad about humanity I've seen and written about it, I can't help but wonder if this way of thinking is indeed my own subconscious need for emotional satisfaction by understanding the meaningless behind meaning.
But that would mean that the meaning behind something meaningless has meaning, and I've just stumbled into a vicious regress.
Perhaps instead of fixating on the pessimistic feel of the glass of life being half full, I should wonder where the hell my sandwich is. Or if it exists at all.
B) Conceptional nonexistence.
Imagine for a second that the infinite universe theory is true. That besides our own world and universe, an infinite amount of other universes and worlds exist which account for every possible given scenario and variation. There are other worlds exactly like ours (down to the last molecule and timeline), worlds that are are slightly different (a world where Obama is not the current president), and worlds that are wildly different (filled without physics and inhabited by sentient cupcakes, etc.).
Given that these universes and worlds do in fact exist, we can assume they have validity in their presence and containing structures. In other words, we can assume that their philosophies, laws of nature, and overall meaning, etc. have validity and we would not be prohibited in comparing them to our own reality (assuming this is true, I have just proved validity by simply describing this fact).
In our world, murder is looked down upon (by most) because of ethical and moral standards we've set for ourselves and our societies. It is frowned upon to take a life that is sentient and living because we can associate feelings of guilt and shame for doing so.
Now, imagine another world where the concept of murder does not exist. Killing another person in this world does not have any moral, ethical, or legal consequences. It is as natural as breathing and there are no feelings associated with it. Nobody gains or loses anything from it. It simply is. There is no social stigma against killing. Here, you can choose to chainsaw the guy next to you and no one would even blink.
So from our standpoint, would we abhor killing in this alternate world, even though nobody there has any problem with it? Even though people in that world don't have the concept of murder?
What I'm trying to get at here is that our social rules, ethics, and laws exist according to the society and surroundings we grow up in. If we are taught that murder is wrong and accept that fact, we will regard it as true. However, what's important to understand is that these are concepts. Concepts are ideas that matter only if we give them coherence and existence. As such, morality involving right and wrong exist because we believe they exist.
So what's the problem with that? Concepts are non physical. They are in our minds. Humans simply made them up. There is no rule that says just because we believe in an idea and practice it, it is real and exists in the universe. It does not mean it has a real basis or is meaningful or important. If I tell you unicorns are real, you can believe that concept and give it life and meaning. But that does not mean unicorns exist. You simply wouldn't know. You can just accept it for what it is because it makes you feel better and helps you sleep at night.
The very same applies to morals. We don't follow them because we know without question that the universe tells us they are real and important. We follow them because we made them up and gave them meaning. We all follow them and acknowledge they are real because we believe they will make us happy and ordered. In a sense, all ideas and concepts are fiction. We are the authors, and we decided this is the story we will live by. Writing down the story on paper does not make it any more real if we choose not to give it meaning.
In the end, it might turn out that nothing exists. After all, physicality and existence are concepts. The words you read right now might not mean anything because none it might be real. We can't fathom what existence is because anything we use to describe it might not exist. There is no satisfiable metaphysical way to justify that reality is in fact real.
So in a way, existence does not exist because we have no way of knowing it exists.
My brain hurts. Good thing the concept of pain might not be "real".
C) The infinite marathon of fear.
Given that concepts might not exist, humans can create anything to be happy in reality. With a clean slate, we could imagine and live in a world where anything is possible if we choose to validate its concepts. We can create a society where we worship a color for half a day or require everyone to jump off a cliff when they become parents.
In our society, we have rules and morals that we follow because they make us orderly, happy, secure, and satisfied. However, it is a personal code. There is a different code for every person and society that exists in the world. You might think cursing is wrong, I might think it is right. It all depends on what set of morals and ethics you were raised on. Everyone has their own perceptions on life and how they choose to live it.
There is no hard and fast rule that everyone follows to make themselves happy and emotionally satisfied. We pick the set of rules we know and stick to them because they give us safety and emotional satisfaction. It justifies our lives and our existences. It allows us to have variations and differences of opinion. It allows us to live differently from the person next to us.
How would life be if we all had the same morals, ethics, and rules? A universal way of belief, some miracle truth that allowed us to coexist? Would we all act the same? Would we have eternal peace and harmony?
The truth is that society and its rules are lies, fiction that we create because we need order. It lets us believe that there is a plan, that there is meaning, that we have a purpose. It lets us escape the prospect of nothing. It is our way of defending against chaos. Chaos is uncontrolled, unpredictable, and unstable. Our fear of chaos far outstrips our fear of order.
That is why people begrudgingly accept governments that abuse them. They inherently know that the alternative is worse. Even if we choose to overthrow the current government, the end result is always the same: we simply create another government that was different from the former. It feels natural and safe to organize and order our lives. It is how we survive.
The problem is that it does not work.
Humans are not meant to be organized and orderly. We are animals and savages, no matter how much we pretend not to be. Elevating ourselves to be cultured and mannered to set up societies and governments does not eliminate murder, theft, or war. We create order because we do not trust ourselves. We live lives of hypocrisy and delusion that suppress what we were designed for. Humans are too unstable and random to control their emotions and actions. We are designed mentally and physically to be unable to control ourselves based on what happens around us.
If you are able to look past the rules and order, you will be able to find freedom. You are able to follow instincts and do as your humanity and physiology demands. That chaos is the zeal of anarchy that attracts so many people. Problem is, anarchy does not thrive because the people who fear chaos will always outnumber the people who don't.
To be truly free, you have to get over your fear of chaos and embrace its hold on what you cannot control about anything. You must let go of any fear or impulse against what you are. It is to understand that every controlling aspect about yourself does not matter and means nothing. That nothing might mean nothing. You have to able to embrace the human imperfections that go against your will to survive. You have to be able to accept that the price of freedom is the compromise of your safety. You might die.
Fear not death, and you shall be free.
It is a price many of us are unwilling to pay. It is impossible for many of us to simply unlearn all those centuries of ancestral experiences with law and order. After all, if your parents did not follow society and decided to be free and dead, you would never have been born.
It is my firm belief that the happiness we seek, the eternal satisfaction, lies in that deathly freedom. It is the freedom to do anything without rules or consequences, to accomplish your wildest dreams and fantasies without fear. Why else would I suggest an end to society? We shouldn't need society to restrict our search for bliss.
Regardless of whether you agree with me or not, the argument brings up a good question. What is ultimate satisfaction and happiness worth to you? Is it worth your life?
----------------------------------------
This was all a short glance into my misguided and fractured philosophy. Hope I made you think.
I sincerely thank you for taking the time to understand another person's perspective. If I'm lucky, I'll force you to do something I bet you rarely do:
Challenge your beliefs.
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