The Book of Love

By the randomness that is the interwebs, i stumbled upon someone saying that Peter Gabriel's song "The book of love" instead being about Love in general - which was the meaning i took from it - could actually be literally about religious scripture. It does make sense:

 

I'm an Atheist (or rather an Anti-Theist), but I imagine this must be how people Feel about their holy books. Being the physical connection to the hidden, inner meaning of the universe. It is something to reach out to, when nothing else feels solid. Something you can trust always to be there, without ever changing, always true, always with something to get you calm again and point you to a better way.

I think this is an appeal to Religion that Atheists often don't consider. Mainly because once you actually read those books, it is all to obvious that it only works if you dont really read them and if you don't research to much into the "unchanging nature" of them. And even more importantly, the concept of "the one unchanging truth" is in it's core why religion is ultimately harmful. But I think I have an idea what people would have to give up, moving towards Philosophy.

 Instead of being the one thing you can relay on, it is the one thing that keeps slipping away. Instead of giving you pointers, philosophy nags about every thing you thought to be true without ever giving any answers. Life becomes an exercise of almost constant contemplation. And Yet, i prefer that recipe to happiness .. but don't ask me if it work .. i'm working on it.

Nowhere

I am awake,
but verything is broken.
Mind, body, hopes and dreams,
it's all a mess and will go nowhere.

Grasping at the very basics,
Breathing, thirst, fear and comfort.
One thing at a time.
But it's going nowhere.

There is nothing to gain, but everything to lose
I'm still here, but why the big fight?
Tired in a way that eats up thoughs, i know
it's going nowhere.

Nowhere at all.

There is no waste in nature

I oftentimes encounter the attitude that mankind is somehow dangerous to the planet. Fairly often people claim to genuinely worry about what we do to mother earth. But it's very obvious the only thing we even can endanger is ourselves, and maybe a few other species (not too many btw, another disproportionate view).

But what really strikes me is the concept of waste. Somehow we became concerned by us making things that don't go away easily. In the context of us not wanting to walk through piles of plastic on our way to work I can see a point there, but we rarely wait until it blocks our way. Usually we get rid of it quite quickly.

So there is some other concern. We think, just because plastic doesn't go away in our lifetime, it's somehow a threat to nature. It simply isnt. But there is more:

We marvel in the horror of our CO2 output. As insignificant as it may be, we calculate that it can have an impact on the planet's climate. Given, there are way bigger players in that game, but at least we participate.

Maybe (and that is a big maybe) we manage to screw up the conditions of our planet so much, that we ourselves have to go, and in doing so creating the perfect conditions for another chapter in the history of the planet.

But there is no waste. Or rather, everything is. Everything in the universe that "matters" is a product of some waste-producing process.

So why the distinction. I guess as the first plants produced oxygen, there could be some rocks going "that wasteful bastards, polluting our nice and clean earth". If nature's goal would be to keep things unchanged for as long as possible the rocks would have a point. But as it turns out, it's not the goal at all. Or nature does a horrible job at it. Either way... there is no waste.

Suns are incredible waste-making machines. Without them, the universe would be a sad and lonely place. All this beautiful waste brought about another machine called life that started to produce it's own beautiful waste. And humans are especially awesome as we are about to export our waste to other planets. We might only be around for a short period to see it, but what we do echos into the future of the cosmos.

Philosophy is a bitch

It's somewhat late. I used to love this times. When i'm getting really tired and my mind starts to fail. I've had my most interesting introspective moments in this state. But in recent years i've stopped to embrace those. I'm getting old.

I always felt old. But now my body seems to catch up. And you really know that you are getting old when you don't have any great plans for the future. It's not likely that i'll rescue the world. It's not likely for me to become a famous rock star, or serial killer. The most likely future is that i'll keep doing what i am doing now. Enjoying and suffering what crosses my way.

Most depressing is that i'm ok with the answers i've found. And puzzles that still loom, start to become something for others to solve. It sounds like wisdom, and it probably is. But wisdom isn't fun at all. In fact it's the opposite of excitement

I'm ok being part of a grand and yet pointless universe. I'm fine being completely unimportant and unremarkable. Mostly because everything else is so too. The sense of importance can only be invoked by ignorance. And ignorance is something you can only loose, not obtain.

Importance is overrated.

Atheism and what it's good for.

I'm an atheist and as such hold the believe that religion, even the vage concept of a creator is distructive to the mind. Simply because it is something that resembles an answer, without any informative value. That said, i'm not in the business to tell others what to believe.

Mainly because i think atheism is not for everyone. It is a depressing though to think that this life is all we have but it doesn't really matter, because there is ultimately no purpose to it anyways.

So I think that religious believes have the purpose to make a meaningless life a bit more bearable. And yet I think that it is hugely important to have some of us skeptics around. I think that progress is a product of the inquisitive and unfulfilled mind. In the end the skeptics do the human race a great service everyone can benefit from.

As I said, i'm not in the business of telling people what to believe, but in the hopes, some of the more agile minds around me, still clouded by some sort of quick-fix answer, but allready unhappy with it, can be persuaded to step one tiny step further. If "hope" is gone anyways, the "message" of the meaningless universe doesn't hurt that much. And a freed mind, driven by the pure frustration of this sad excuse of a universe, will set out and try to make it better.

Science Fiction

I love Science Fiction. And I'm not getting tired to tell everyone that it is the most important genre of them all. And I'm not even kidding.

The main reason why I think that is because I love to be reminded from time to time of what an amazing project the human race is. And that we are on the way to something impossibly great. At every moment almost all people around the world are making plans for the future. It's what we do. It's what brought us down from the trees, out of the ocean, into the city and finally into space.

Compared to the life of a human only a few generations back, we achieved one impossible thing after another. We don't notice it, because the moment something can be done, it's done and we immediately get bored by it. That's why we are always on to the next thing. Who is really amazed by electricity? Be honest. And yet it's beyond magic from the standpoint of someone living in medieval times.

Science Fiction tries to make predictions about what is coming next. Often times it inspires people. Sometimes it's just a good example of what not to do. But it's always a good exercise to play things through in our heads. The human brain is a "what if"-machine. We can't even help it. Literature in general is the artistic expression of this - our state of mind, but SciFi especially.

Compared to other genres, science fiction comes with a few important rules. It has to be plausible, it has to explain why it is the way it is, and it has to be new. If you don't learn something from a SciFi story, it's either a bad one, or you haven't tried hard enough. But that's the goal.

SciFi is the mother of invention. Not always in the literal from. Sometimes it's just the wild imagination of some dude. But it is safe to claim that almost all inventors in the past have been inspired by SciFi, almost all politicians have been scared of it, and every kid has dreamed about what it's like to walk the moon.

Enough ... you get the point .. :)