Humanity

I have been thinking a lot lately about the human condition and quite frankly it’s disgusting to look around the world.

I’ll be honest, I don’t really care for most people, I’m not a complete misanthrope, but the hypocrisy, the lack of drive to move forward, the contentment, these things drive me crazy.

I remember a quote from Socrates that I read years ago… okay remember is a strong word but I can paraphrase. He basically said that children were disrespectful to their elders, politicians were corrupt and businessmen were greedy.

He was describing his Greece about 1600 years ago, but what he was really doing was describing the human condition.

I know what most people think when faced with this, that it’s just human nature, and it’s very funny to me that they never think they belong in any of those categories, but we all do, it is after all, human nature.

But why do we restrain ourselves by our own nature? Early human nature was living in caves, eating fruit, and communicating by grunts. But we don’t do that anymore. Early human nature was to freak out and scream and act wild when something strange came into camp, even if it was another early human but we don’t do that anymore either.

The point is that we can overcome our own nature, the question is why we do not.

What happened to Nietzcshe’s ubermensch? What happened to human drive and our want to be better? Obviously our ancestors had it, but somewhere we seemed to have lost it.

We’ve dropped all of it and simply look to trod along the path even further to our own depressed demise.

The last place I worked was in an office filled with perfect examples of this quandary. My coworkers didn’t strive to be better, oh they talked about it, talked about how they prayed for their god to guide them and keep them, but that was the extent of their work. Otherwise they simply wanted to sit and fester in their own boring lives that are leading to the same places their ancestors went.

Some may say this is overly critical, some may say that life is simply to be enjoyed and both have a point. But I cannot abide to see the greatest potential of all the earth, the human mind, to sit and devote its time to how they’re going to have nicer things than their neighbors. To watch them suck up to assholes because they have a title. To watch nothing more than the newest form of feudal rule run the same course it has throughout history.

I grow weary of it and it angers me. The human brain and body are the two greatest tools on earth. To watch them wasted is, in my opinion, pointless.

Humanity has created a litany of fantasies and false reasoning so that they won’t kill themselves of boredom. We’ve created religions, gods and devils, and the worst of all the excuse of human nature all so that we don’t have to do the work, so that we don’t have to face the self.

Human nature is something to allow you to sleep at night when faced with the outside world, with its greed, with its corruption, with all its ugly truths. It allows us to placate our feelings about this, write them off, throw them out, and do nothing about it.

But human nature should never be an excuse for the self. To do so is to be weak. To tell oneself “that’s just the way I am” is to let go of all the power that a person has and accept being less than one is capable of. This is inexcusable.

I don’t mean to sound jaded or cynical, but there is simply no reason for all the problems of the world, we have the power to change the world for the better. Yet, we’d prefer to sit and be nothings. It’s easier that way, and our ego won’t get in the way and make us feel guilty because we have so many checks and defenses against it.

My point is very simple, be everything good that you can, and stop everything bad that you are. Learn, grow, push, do the things that scare you. But most importantly of all, be honest with yourself and never accept something you don’t like about yourself, it is your duty and your honor as a human to ever strive to be the ubermensch.

God and his place in our world

For those who don’t know me, I come from a long line of Christian preachers. My father, his father, his father, and so on. I was literally supposed to be the next great preacher in the line. I think it’s safe to say that will never happen.

For some time when I was making my switch from devout Christian to strict non-believer I had more than a few discussions with my parents.
One of the argument techniques my father has used for some time is that he simply bombards you with information. He shows you how much he knows about the bible and dares you to defy. He does this because he knows that 99.9% of people don’t have near the biblical knowledge that he does.
He’s a studier, he doesn’t just read the bible, he studies the translations of words, what the original Greek, Hebrew or Aramaic texts say. And I will give him credit, he knows his stuff very well.
But one day I flipped the tables, for as much as he did know about the bible and his faith, there was plenty of history about that book and that faith that he didn’t know. So I used his own trick on him… needless to say he didn’t care for my tactic too much, no one wants to be beaten by their own signature move.
It was nice to be able to “win” one, as though winning is actually possible in these instances but it still felt good. But to be honest, I regret it now.

Now people won’t talk to me about faith and religion if they disagree with me, the reason is simple, they know they do not know the history like I do, they know I can rip apart a bible verse with little problem or effort. Basically, people have become intimidated by how much I’ve studied.
I’m not bragging by any stretch, for every person that makes me feel smart there are plenty that I listen to and realize how much I don’t know.
But the thing I hate is that people always tell me how I need to “get back to god” and when I go to tell them that won’t be happening they immediately begin to back off saying “Well I can’t debate it with you from an academic stand point so I’m not even going to try.”
That’s the coward’s way out. God has never rested anywhere other than the imagination, he is an idea, a philosophical metaphor. The easiest way to tell that is to go to a local church on Sunday morning and ask as many people in the service to define god to you. Not one answer will be the same.

How is that possible? This God allegedly is the founder of the three not so great monotheistic religions. Yet no one defines him the same. Even with thousands of pages of texts to describe the mysterious diety, the interpretations are all different.

Of course it’s not possible, and that’s one of the very reasons that Christianity and every other religion are a bunch of bunk.

The sooner people realize that God is an idea to be discussed in realm of philosophy and not the author of existence, the better off all people will be.

Fight the good fight, don’t stoop to their level, and cover the world with reason.