Personal Journal

Longing for the company of an atheist

Well, I am. I'm longing for the company of an atheist.

AdrianaCB was one, but I didn't know it at the time.

The Road just has my soul* in a constant state of turmoil. The veneer that is culture, civilization, normative behavior.

Injustice. Omnipresent through time. Nature herself appears to have no concept of it. I wonder: would an alien intelligence consider it? What if not (we'd be doomed).

Are we destroying ourselves? Can homo sapiens sapiens get its shit together long enough on this planet to found a self-sustaining colony off-world? That, for me, is the only measure of success of our species. If we can endure independently elsewhere, no matter how small the scale, I believe we are as 'eternal' a species as a galaxy can produce (for galaxies too would seem to have a lifespan).

If there is no god, there can be no final justice, except in the philosophical sense that death comes, we have strong reason to believe, to the universe itself. Fine, no such thing as real justice outside of human institutions is possible, and the aforementioned would be tentative as any human system, subject to our inherent flaws (I might have to try to name them at some point).

I can live with the injustices of nature, because if we can colonize off-world, in theory, we can give the planet we started on back to nature, and we can preserve whatever we find and wish to, I would think. That, Iguess, represents my personal concept of heavan. The success of my species off-world.

Then my Hell is this earth, which is in no way an original idea, of course. I think.
I('m starting to believe.
That my role on this earth is to help create my vision of heaven.

And I am a weak, weak man. And flawed.

Maybe this is why The Road stirs me so. I am feeling more and more in each day as though the future I envision isn't going to be possible. That our flaws are consuming us faster than our virtues can atone for.

I have resolved to try not to be part of the problem, and I can be doing a better job, and should be, but for aforementioned flaws and weakness. I can imagine us NOT making it.

As Dave Frank said to me on the river on Dolores (sorrows?) about watching his 7 year old kayak in the cold cold water: "It doesn't take a lot of imagination to see something that could go wrong." It doesn't take much imagination to see homo sapiens destroying its environment to the point that we cannot outlast the half-life of the devestation. Nuclear weapons. Impending resource scarcities brought about by pollution and over-consumption.

If there is no god, such a thing would have as little significance to the universe as whether Pluto is a planet or a planetoid... But to me, oh and for once, perhaps, it represents the greatest tragedy in the scope of the known universe, because we have, as far as we can determine, the greatest potential of any living thing in the universe.

If there is no real long-view justice, no final balancing of accounts, then it is our obligation as human beings to try to maintain as close to balanced accounts as circumstances allow, and to create surpluses for our progeny to fall back in during times of unpreventable hardship. This has been the mistake of Keynesian economics: to believe that generations are capable of creating surpluses that future generations can use. At least to date; one can hold out hope. One should. Another prospect of the Road. Does a human being have an intellectual duty to carry on in the face of cataclysm, and not take one's own life? Therein lies philosophy the likes of which I'm unqualified, based on my undergrad experience, to render an opinion of my own (such is the trap of philosophy departments).

In that situation, the one in The ROad, I don't know. It's the fascination of the story: would I take the path of the wife, or the man? I even wonder whether I, callous as I can be, would resort to cannibalism and the raiding parties. I surely would hope not.

I think, getting back on point, that I have an obligation to create as much justice as I can on this earth, now, while I'm in it, and to endeavor to create a trend of people being conscientious of justice in their own lives, and temperance, and forgiveness, and acceptance.

I cannot be hopeless, is what I'm saying.
Even in the face of THIS society, I have to try to change the course of human development.
How, exactly, does one go about achieving that?

Because a part of me would like to discard with all morality, or the inconvenient parts, like do unto others. Rather, do first, as some half-heartedly say. Isn't that how we live now anyway? And if there's no god to judge me favorably at 'the end of it all', and if, as seems certain, I do not have children of my own, and if, as seems certain, I never achieve any degree of recognition from said society, what then is a realistic goal, a lasting contribution?

The emptiness awaiting the end of that question is enough to make an atheist understand why a concept of the divine is really psychologically beneficial to an individual HS (homo sapiens). It frees one from what seems for me to have become the most difficult dilemma in all of theology. What does it mean that I am here, now, in this place, with these talents, weaknesses, and flaws. What should I DO with it?

This is why I needed to write again.
I'm not staying in touch with my unfortunately grandiose level of depth and self-aggrandizement.
fuckin sigh


It is never too late to be what you might have been. -- George Eliot
Courage to start and willingness to keep everlasting at it are the requisites for success. -- Alonzo Newton Benn