What's in a belief?

Welcome back my friends, to the blog that never ends!
After a short sabbatical and discussion period, to  revise the next evolution of Story Time, it returns with a vengeance! This weeks post will address a topic of discussion which has been reoccurring with my peers sense In the Case of Mathematics vs. Gods, Religions and Other Worldly Philosophies, began to make its way to wanting eyes: what do I believe? I'm not going to bog this intro down discussing what lies ahead, but be warned religion and philosophies are discussed; if that's not something you want to deal with then you probably should stop reading this post, AFTER you finish the intro. This rant is the first post for the month of October and is just a little something to remind the interwebz community this blog lives. In the coming weeks expect to see My Top 10 DIY Halloween Costumes (there will be a category for geeky/pop cultural relevance and a category for the Honoring the Spirit of All Hallows (if more than 20 DIY ideas come to me I may add an additional category, but that's unconfirmed)). This idea was sparked with the barrage of text messages I've received sense October 1st, of people asking me how to make costumes (I swear you build a couple sets of armor and suddenly your the go-to for last minute ideas). Going into November, I haven't decided what topics we will cover in the blog, but I assure you weekly posts are returning, so do not forget about Story Time!!!
For those of you, who are interested in what's happening with the book, here's an update: currently, nothing. I've continued contacting and sending queries to agents, but as of yet nothings confirmed. I know some of you are probably sad about this, because you want to know what fate ultimately holds for Pan and Rio, but fear not loyalists I am here for YOU! I figure, just because I'm not making money off the book, doesn't mean I should deprive interested parties from reading it; ergo, starting today Story Time by Wilshire, is offering a challenge: every time the number of followers on the blog is doubled, I will post an additional chapter. Currently, between networked blogs and blogspot we have a wopping 16 followers, which means if we can get that number up to 32 I will post chapter 7; when it hits 64 you get chapter 8, etc, etc. And I am perfectly willing to post the entire book on this website, for free, if enough people follow it! The problem right now is, few are getting to read it: that is not why I wrote it. I want people to read it, I would rather give the entire story away for free, if there's enough demand, rather than let it collect dust: plus I'm working on book two and I know that those who have read the entire story, want to know what happens next. So, there's your challenge readers! Go forth, tell your friends, tell your Facebook buddies, tell your coworkers, tell random strangers! If you bring the readers I will give you the book! With the future of the blog and the book discussed, consider the intro over: so as I said before, if you want to avoid rants about religion and philosophy run away now :D

What's in a Belief?

As I’ve tried to pave my way into the world of novelist; I’ve noticed an interesting re occurrence in discussions with my peers. What is my theology? What do I believe? To quote a close friend who was perusing my manuscript, “this thing’s pretty damn sacrilegious.” So today we are going to break the taboo and discuss the dirty word that is Religion!

Let’s clarify some of the common questions to start: I am not an atheist; I do not practice ancient pagan rituals; I am not a heretical Christian. To put it bluntly, I have no religion; they are all the same thing, with different accessories to fit any individual’s specific needs. I am a philosopher. I question everything; sometimes I find answers; most of the time I find more questions. You want to know what I believe; well here is what I’ve got so far, in a nut shell.
First off, modern philosophy is fundamentally flawed. No one has ever proven that we exist; the earliest arguments often suffered from solipsism and as a result it was pretty much accepted that we exist and we built upon it from there. I am an empirical pluralist (this is already setting up to be fun; am I right?): this essentially means, I believe in multiple realities and I can only know what I personally experience. When I say there are multiple realities what I mean is; every person, every single one of us has our own perceptions, and this dictates our perceived reality. My reality can never be your reality: even if I walked 500 miles in your shoes, that is still me in your shoes: I cannot know, what you know. I can be empathetic, sympathetic and even have similar experiences, but ultimately I am not you and you are not me, therefore we can never truly know, what the other is experiencing. Is there one true reality? Probably. I mean, we all see and experience the world around us and are able to classify, recognize and identify similar aspects within it; however, the ability to perceive the true nature of reality, I believe, is beyond the limited capabilities of the human mind. This entire concept is very similar to Plato’s perception of forms. I do not know that there is a true reality, I can merely assume there is from the experiences I’ve had; I do know however, that the reality you have is not my reality, it is yours; therefore I know there are multiple realities.

Back to us being animals; we are. However, we hold a very unique ability when compared to others and it is our capacity for reason. Though we are animalistic by nature, we truly are beings of reason: it’s this unique feature of our brain chemistry which has led to the creation of the human soul. However, we greatly undersell our abilities as humans. We are always anxious to credit others with our accomplishments and failures. “God saved me,” “the devil is punishing me,” these things are not happening; this is a case of your ego prevailing over your conscious. You are unable to face the depths of darkness and the peaks of power within yourself, so you scapegoat the credit to some divine being.

So what is the purpose of life? To die. Kind of dreary right? Well it’s the only constant we know. Life is chaos. The random improbable occurrences that led to the mere chance of us existing are astronomical; but the universe is big! Really, really big. Though we have a projected size for our universe, we do not have an answer for what lies beyond that, or beyond that, or beyond that, etc. I assume existence, this whole general mish mash, is infinite. How big is infinite? Never ending. What does that mean? Anything that can happen; has, will and is happening somewhere. Are we alone in the universe? Experience would point to yes, but reasoning dictates no. Basically, there is no point to life, it is chaotic and just happens; however, you dictate your own reality, ergo you create your own meaning to life! YAY, we are all the authors of our own existence!

That not doing it for ya? Yeah, me either; let’s take a minute and evaluate what we are currently looking at.

1. Philosophy, as we know it, is fundamentally flawed.

2. Religion is a false construct created by humans to explain the unknown, nicely.

3.Life is unique to each of us, but ultimately meaningless.

Now, I know what you are thinking; if that’s the case, let’s embrace chaos! Woot woot anarchy!

No. That is not what we do. The concept of anarchy is in itself an oxymoron and is ultimately a coward’s response when faced with the truth. This takes me back to a point I made before, we are beings of reason. Each of us, individually, knows what we perceive to be right and wrong, good and evil, just and unfair. Our opinions of the subjects may differ but the concepts are universal. Here’s where I start to get a bit preachy; given our superior reasoning capabilities compared to other animals, we have a moral obligation to be responsible. I don’t need god to tell me not to kill people, I know that it’s wrong given I don’t want people to kill me. What does this responsibility entail? Well, it means we must honor that which gives us life; the planet earth. Now, before you go set up an altar to the mother goddess, let me finish. I don’t mean praises and sacrifices; what I mean is controlled consumption. Think of it this way; when you change the oil in your vehicle, do you dump it in your bottle of water and drink it? When you go to the bathroom, do you make sure to pile it where you sleep? No you don’t; these are stupid things to do. Now, extrapolate this to a larger scale, and maybe the picture will begin to resolve. WE must stop acting as if we are entitled to do what we want to the earth and each other; rather we must be grateful that we’ve had the chance to exist on it and interact with its fellow inhabitants. How do we show this gratitude; by ceasing to destroy our world. We have evolved past the point of natural selection; in the sense that modern amenities and medicine allow us to live when we shouldn’t. I am an example of this. I was an asthmatic, overweight, uncoordinated child. According to the properties of natural selection, I should have died when my parents took me home and the new paint in the house caused my breathing to stop. But I didn’t, because I was taken back to the hospital and modern medicine was able to bitch slap the natural order of the world. Is this wrong? Yes and no. I’m not going to go out and kill myself to restore order; however, I do acknowledge that every breath I take, every moment I’m awake is borrowed time and I bask in all of them. You see, the world is not a tool meant for us to bend to our will, but that is exactly what we do. You don’t have to have a Serta mattress to sleep; we made those. You don’t have to have a car to travel; we made those. Now I am not proposing we hang the lot of humanities accomplishments and go back into the forests with spears in hand; however, it is time we acknowledge the wrongs we’ve done and accept the consequences. WE must admit there is a problem, before we can begin to fix it and I assure you WE CAN fix it. The infinite compassion of divinity is within all of us; it is not God, Allah, Jesus, Buddha, or Krishna; it is me, you, your neighbor and complete strangers. Look in a mirror, the greatest evil, demon and obstacle you will ever face is staring at you. It is your personal insecurities and uncertainties parading about your mind under the guise of your ego. Reject the self, the individual; embrace that, though life is meaningless chaos, you have the ability to recognize that through reasoning and thusly have the responsibility to make it better, for yourself and everyone else. Change does not have to be radical; it simply must be embraced.

Back to thinking I’m an atheist? That’s fine; let’s chat about death and you will probably sing a different tune.

What happens when we die? Well, if I’ve done it before, I can’t remember. Ultimately it boils down to one of two things: A) that’s all she wrote and welcome to an eternity of nothingness or B) the soul moves on in some manner. Most atheists will conform to choice A. Most of the Religious community prefers option B. Personally I really don’t know. Logic and reason point to option A…kind of. Let’s talk physics for a moment: it is a law of physics that energy cannot be created or destroyed it can only change forms. Now, let’s examine the human body. It is a vessel of energy; we have electrical impulses traveling through our neural synapses so our brain can work and make the rest of our body function. What happens to this energy when we die? It cannot simply cease to exist, or we ignore a fundamental property of physics. Perhaps, every step we take, every pump our heart makes and every breath we exhale is that finite energy escaping our body: essentially, spreading our energy everywhere we go until the day we die. Now, I said before that the soul was a human construct, but now I ask the question, what if we have labeled this energy within us all as the soul? By this logic option B is starting to make more sense. We transfer are self to all things and thus when we die our soul, technically, moves along. Perhaps this energy will meld with others and eventually regain consciousness; similar to reincarnation. Perhaps in times of stress we leave this energy behind when we die, either in a location, with an object or possibly on a person; thus haunting this thing long after our physical body depletes: like ghosts! Now when it comes to the paranormal, I am a skeptic, however I have had personal experiences which make me question. As I said before, I am an empiricist; short of me finding a full body, intelligent, apparition, I will remain a skeptic.

Now in terms of the paranormal you have three types of haunts; residual, intelligent and demonic (bear with me while I explain please). A residual haunt is an event that reoccurs which cannot be interacted with; like a video on loop. Perhaps this happens because so much energy was involved in the situation, it continually manifests…that’s what paranormal research tells you; personally I don’t buy that. A residual haunt, if they exist, seems more like a slip in space/time to me (that’s right, we are about to get Sci-Fi up in here). I said before that we are incapable of knowing true reality; I believe this is the mind and body’s self defense mechanism. We perceive space and time as linear: extending from one point, outward to another: this perception is wrong. Space/time is neither flat, nor linear: but I also do not believe that it is fluid either. The ability to articulate the structure of it is not something the human mind is capable of; but I will give my best analogy. Think of a ball of yarn: that is space/time. Everything wrapped together; the beginning shrouded somewhere beneath all else. To take it a step further, what if these “threads” can pass through one another? This is what I feel residual haunts are.

Intelligent haunts, I break down to two categories: people and (for lack of a better description) earth spirits: I am not referring to the modern perception of pixies, leprechauns and tricksters (though I do believe our ancestors could have labeled them as this). An earth spirit is not a physical or ethereal creature; it is simply an embodiment of natural primordial energy: i.e. chaos. It is not here to help or harm, and it really isn’t even an “it” as we understand and label with the concept. They are simply primordial chaotic energy that messes with you. Earth spirits don’t seek worship, they don’t seek attention nor communication; they simply manifest unexplainable chaos around those they encounter. People spirits are simply that: the residual energy an individual leaves when they die. This could happen for multiple reasons; perhaps they died before their body could naturally dispel its energy; maybe they were so focused on not dying that the energy remained in some way (like the whole “unfinished business” idea). Also, the person may have become their life; with their entire being so focused on performing their daily grind, their energy remains, after their body fades, to go through the motions.

Next up is demonic haunting…this sounds to religious so I’m going to go ahead and use the term daemonic, instead. A daemonic haunt is not a demon, devil nor monster; it is us. People can be really evil; they can also be very nice, but our inherent reactions are usually evil (we only are able to surpass these base instincts through reasoning). This evil enters the world through thoughts, actions and voice. When left to brood long enough or feed off of similar feelings, this energy grows in power. I personally believe that most cases of daemonic haunts are simply misinterpreted earth spirits (natural chaos energies). A daemon is not an ancient energy, simply a concept we have empowered. Suddenly I don’t sound like an atheist so much, huh? More like a witch. That term still doesn’t work for me though. I will admit the Wicca’s have some good ideas, but ultimately I feel there personification of the world and its elements is as much of an insult to existence as any other religion.

So there you have it. These are my feelings about existence: I don’t really fit into any religion; I’m not really an atheist; I’m just a person with very few answers and a heap of questions. Rant done.