Utopia

Up late with many thoughts so I thought I'd do some good old fashioned blogging.

I was just thinking about the idea of Utopia and what it means. As you all know, Utopia is simply an ideally perfect place. Typically when people think of a Utopian world, like heaven, they think of this conflict-free, peaceful world where no one is sad, no one is lonely and everyone is socially equal (ie no one likes anyone more/less). I think it's something we all naturally strive towards, but I wonder if there's any merit in that. I mean, it's based on the premise that happiness is better than sadness, peace better than conflict, equality better than inequality... All of which are based on nothing. There is nothing inherently better about happiness than sadness. There is nothing inherently better about peace than conflict, equality, inequality. The only difference is in terms of the pleasure we derive from each (or think we'll derive). And as I've stated before in this blog, it's all in dualisms anyway, ie happiness can't occur without sadness etc. In fact, based on that, sadness is equally important as happiness... So why do we give precedence to happiness?

I realise that, as humans, it's instinctual to strive for pleasure and avoid pain. That's just how we work. No matter what you do, or the reasons you do it, it is ALWAYS for the above reasons. But what I'm going to suggest is that we stop striving for these "Utopias". Not because Utopia is an unpleasant idea, but because to strive for Utopia is to try to escape the very things that make us human. It's not about the "greater good" or "equality for all", Utopia is about an individual escaping their own humanity, and that's it. And yes, I realise that what I've just said is somewhat paradoxical, ie Utopia is pleasure, pleasure is instinct, Utopia is about escaping our humanity. But I don't think it's contradictory, and that's because the predicted pleasureableness of Utopia is completely psychological. Yes, the psychology of it is a natural derivative of our instinct, but it's not essential. I say this because I know the power of the mind.

(this blog is about to get markedly crapper, and a lot more ranty and hard to understand)

The other day I lay in bed after watching Abre Los Ojos (Open Your Eyes in English), which was, funnily enough, one of the most eye opening movies I've ever seen. Anyway, afterwards I lay in bed and I was thinking hardcore about everything... But at one point I just had this huge epiphany: that life doesn't matter. It is, essentially, a dream. I am the only one who surely exists. And if you are all characters in my dream, then why should I be scared of you? When I feel pain, why should I worry? Why strive for some bullshit Utopian world when the world you live in IS ALREADY a Utopia?! That's essentially the crux of what I'm saying. Take hold of your pain, anguish, confusion, anger - whatever - and create from it peace. Realise that you don't need some "idealistic" world to live an idealistic life. Rise above your humanity dammit!

And just so you know, I've been fucking awesome since that moment. In fact, I had a really drug-like experience a few minutes after... But I can't be bothered explaining that lol.

To prove(?) whatever my point was, I'll give you some crappy analogy that I think about lots:
Which looks better: A movie completely in white, a movie completely in black or a movie in black and white?
Mull that one over for a second. Deep.

Point out where I didn't make sense pwease fagios!

Religion

So this is my first blog in like... 13.23423^43 months. But it's gonna be sexual. Like a rapist who's just been released from prison, to make an unnecessarily disgusting comparison.

Anyway, it's on RELIGION! I know - what an original topic! How many people have written about religion before? In the vicinity of 3, I'll bet. I'm as unique as... I dunno. A guy with a side swept fringe, black clothing and eye shadow.

Onwards though... I was just at a camp with my ole xtian (God I hate that - "xtian") friends, and I thought I'd write about my new thoughts on religion. The hilarious Jill Bennetts was speaking that evening, and I won't go into what she was talking about (because it had no relevance to me), but I was sitting in my seat basically rebutting and discrediting everything she said in my head. It was pretty dam awesome obviously, sitting there dominating her opinion and feeding my own ego, but after a while I began to wonder whether there was any point to it. I mean, sure, I myself don't think there's any place for religion here today, but is that any reason to go round cutting christians down (not that I actually do this, but hypothetically)?

Being the genius man I am, I sat down and nutted the question out as logically as possible. I won't detail the whole process down here, but the crux of my thinking is that christians are happy, they're not (to any decent degree) effecting me without my own choosing, so therefore there's no reason to get all hot headed about them. Yeah, it's a simple way of looking at it, but it makes sense to me (though that's possibly through my own choosing...).

In fact, we have a lot to learn from christians (or at least this specific church). I mean, it's amazing how much more you notice when you've not been around that sort of a group for a long time. When I was christian I always took the whole community type thing for granted. It was just how things were. But after going back and seeing it all again, I can see how much there is to learn from them. It's a very rare thing, being able to go into a group of people, many of whom you don't know well or don't know at all, and still feel like you're a part of things (granted I didn't take advantage of this... I was feeling pretty average). Not only that, but, even if their motivation is essentially "God told me to", the prophecies during services are phenomenal! Even more phenomenal from an atheist's perspective, because given we don't believe in god, that means that any "prophecy" one christian gives to another is from their own heart. Take away the god factor, and it's essentially just one person telling another person how well they think of them. If only people could adopt this sort of behavior into regular day to day life! It'd be flippin' awesome!

Anyway, I'm getting to into ma B.Marley to continue this, so I'll summarise. Basically, we atheists need to take a different perspective towards christians other than just "christians are dumb". Despite all of its inadequacies, christianity (and religion in general) has a lot of things to be learned from it. The key is to look at it from an unbiased perspective, taking the positives and ditching the negatives. In fact, it reminds me of something I read a little while ago (from a comment on Maggie's Farm by Bob Dylan at Songmeanings.net):

"Dylan is not a liberal; he is not a communist; he is not a vegetarian; he is not an environmentalist; he is not anything that normal people could relate to, and this is mostly by choice. He is a narcissistic artist who craves nothing but to feed his ego by doing things that convince himself and/or others that he is wiser and more advanced than anyone else. I relate because I have a similar desire. Only meaningless drones feel the need to conform to a particular political philosophy at all times"...
"This is the ultimate in power, and if you achieve it you will scoff at those who insist on viewing the world based on something as petty as liberal or conservative, capitalist or socialist, democrat or republican."

What I take from that is that conforming to idealistic systems such as the examples he's given (and essentially any one side of a dualism) will basically only cause you to be more stubborn when looking at other people's opinions. If we look at the world on a situation by situation basis then we can be free of bias and stubbornness - we can look at the situation from a purely rational perspective. That's why I've decided to free myself of all these labels and just "be" (I might write a blog on this later too).

So yeah. I may blog again soon! Good luck poyos.