March 18, 2008 at 6:43 am (philosophical thoughts)
If one disregards the concept of God, and the fact that there is no creator of the world and mankind. One must then begin to realize that there is no prupose to the world itself. If there is a purpose it is one that has been created by man itself, and thus – one would instantly believe just after realizing this - a false purpose. If there is no God, however, then all purposes would then have to be false purposes, but if there are only false purposes and no true purpose then what makes the false purposes false? Therefore, one must conclude that there are no false purposes only purposes. However, if there are only ‘purposes’ that man creates then are all purposes true purposes? I cannot agree with that statement either. I dont think there are any “true” or “false” purposes. I think there are only puposes some better then others. It is the job of mankind to search for a purpose that is worthy for the race to follow, and thus we must find the best purpose.
In order to find the purpose that is right and most beneficial to us we must first figure out what kind of world we are living in now and what kind of world we wish to live in. When one usually talks about the world we live in you would hear the words global, capialisitic, democratic, modern . . etc etc. They will tell you of the world that man has created for himself on earth thus far; however, I think we must look at things from a more general perspective; which, in a way, is a more simpler perspective. We, as humans, create our world from the natural world. We reshape natural things and give them a human purpose, and thus we create an aritificial world which is our own.
The natural world is the world as it is without human influence. It is a world that was never created but just seems to exist in complete chaos and is not maintained at all. The artificial world is human based and is created from man. We change the natural world into something that we wish to live in. Thus man does not adapt to his surroundings but makes his surroundings change ro him. Thus giving the earth a consciouse will and a purpose; which is completely lacking in the natural world.
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January 26, 2008 at 9:58 am (philosophical thoughts)
When man looks honestly at himself he sees something in him that is animal; however, he also sees something that is not. In the past this ’something that is not animal’ has always been attributed to that which is godlike within us. Thus seeing this duality in us man has looked at himself as being between two things. That of the animal and that of God. It would seem that he is in the middle of an evolutionary process, like a bird slowly evolving wings that will eventually let it fly. It could also seem that he is between two worlds the primal earth and a pure heaven, and he must leave his earthly body (that which is animal) to metamorph into something godlike or angelic, and thus be able to live in heaven. In both cases it has been viewed that this ‘godlike’ attribute will bring us to some wonderful place, and perhaps it might, but what is it? what is it that seperates us from the animals? even though there is much that is animal in us, it cannot be denied that we aren’t completely like them.
An animal adapts to his surroundings; a God creates his surroundings. An animal becomes a part of his environment; the environment becomes a part of a God. This is the true difference between the two, and represents the horrible ambivilance found in man: the desire to adapt and thrive struggles against the desire to create and suffer.
When man first became man, I cannot help but feel that the thought that man felt that changed him from being just an animal was, “I cannot live like this!”, and the inability to change how he was living allowed the animal to survive. Thus man learned the desire but not the way. God was then created by man to shift the blame that the world is as it is to something that could control and change his surroundings. Thus man learned of God and attributed to him the first cause of all things. When man placed God as the first cause of all things he made his greatest error (one that we are still struggling with today)which is that of confusing first and last things: the original cause and effect. For which came first God or man? It was man’s desire to live differently from the way he was living that created God. My proof of this is this: if God was first cause then man would be happy and would have always lived in a ”garden of eden”; however, we do not live like this and desire change. Thus there is no God that created a heaven and earth for us to live in. How many explanations and refutations of this simple fact there are! One could spend a thousand life times writing each one down and refuting it by the commonly held methods of science; however, I do not have the time nor the desire to attack these hydra heads. Instead let me stab this monster’s heart! The original tale of the fall held that it was because of original sin that man fell from this paradise. How did man sin? By eating from the tree of knowledge (by becoming dissatisfied with his surroundings and himself). It is the very thing that seperated man from the animals that he began to consider sin (for it was the root to all of his suffering). Thus God becomes a being in which man can transfer the desire to change his surrounding; therefore, become happy again by becoming like the animals and being able to accept and adapt; however, he found that he could not do such a thing until his surroundings had actually changed. Thus man creates a heaven and gives credit to God.
It is that very thing that we despise most in ourselves that is the root to what seperates us from the animals. The desire not to adapt to our surroundings but to create them. The desire not to become part of our surroundings, but make our surroundings become a part of ourselves. Since nature is very difficult and seems to be very resistant to our wills, we begin to suffer and become dissatisfied with ourselves.
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