Futitlity - The Human Engine

That's what it means to fight against patterns you will never affect. Things you can't change no matter how much you tried.

Frustrated in life is how I feel most of the time. I live in a world where few things I choose seem to be my own choices. I live in a world where as far as I see few people choose the things in their lives. We live in a world where the most important choices are made by people who don't care and who cannot be stopped.

Futility.

Futility is trying to stop the rainforests from being cut down. Imagine the last rainforests of this earth. Let us not pretend. Few people who have stepped into a rainforest would actually tell you how beautiful it is. Simply because it's not. It's hot and muggy, the ground is covered with dirty mud, leeches and a thousand creepy crawlies. It is a harsh unforgiving faded green and if you got lost in it you would die pretty soon. But it's precious because there is little of it left. Imagine the countries the jungles grow in. South America, Central Africa and South East Asia are poor countries. Around the edges of the jungle live thousands upon thousands of people. They are uneducated, bitter and brutal in their will to survive. They don't know what the ozone layer is, they don't know about extinction rates, they don't know how precious their jungles are. They only know that they have a mouth to feed. And so they slash and hack and burn down the trees. The people who pay them rule these countries. They are educated. They do know what the ozone layer is, extinction rates and how precious their jungles are. But they live their lives scared that every morning when they wake up, they will awake powerless, penniless and without meaning. They have learnt through harsh systems, the iron law of strike first or be struck. If burning down the jungles lets them live, so be it.

And then all of the Western world shakes their heads and cry murder. But the US is still the largest producer of green house gases. Save the animals! Save the trees! Woe the change of weather! What are you going to do? Feed the millions of people dependent upon cutting down the jungles? House them, clothe them and give their children an education? How will you stop the thousands of blood sucking business and men and politicians? Will you announce war upon those countries and hold coups? Can you extract such an integral part of the economy without upsetting everything?

Deforestation is part of the Human Engine. If you take out a cog, the machine will break. Save the trees and animals yes good good. Are you going to save the families and lives dependent on the deforestation? Are you going to stabilise the economies of the countries the jungles live in?



That was an example of what the Human Engine is like. It plays again and again and again. Politics and corruption, crime, piracy, drugs, weapons, oil, cigarettes and alcohol. You can stop none of these things in truth without upsetting entire socio-economies. They are so ingrained within our systems that massive parts of the world are built upon these systems. It's like a tumour that keeps the body alive.

And even if you wanted to stop it, you'd find yourself playing a shadow game of ghosts and feints. Who would you be fighting? What would you be fighting? Companies? There are thousands of them. Destroy one and another will take its place. Governments? Which one? How would you stop the millions of games they play?

How can we hope to fight half the world and maybe more?
How can we hope that the world will change for the better when everyone only wishes for it to stay the same because they live of it?

We can only hope... that the world will find a way or rightening itself.

The Problem of Evil

This is a real interesting topic to start off with. It is probably, the most heated theological debate and cycles and works upon several other debated topics and opinions. So maybe not the most basic place to start, but maybe the best.

Ok. What is the problem with God? Evil exists. Oh dear...

Let me rant first. Some atheist once said he saw a poster of children dying in Somalia from drought and famine and his heart broke and he said, THERE IS NO GOD! Great job. Good advertistment from the donation efforts of the world. Right, anyway, so where did this great invocation come from? And - what did he do about it?

Where did all this emotion come from? Was he ever in Africa? Did any of his family members die tragically? Was he just a very sensitive man? No, no, no, maybe. Maybe he was a sensitive man. And knowledge of people suffering really tore his heart. Maybe we can answer that with the next question.

What did he do about it? Became atheist. Wrote a lot of books against God. Lectured here and there and had some famous debates... hmmm... well I'm sure all that helped alleviate the situation in Africa.

For all the moral relativists out there, if a Christian/Muslim/Buddhist/another Atheist, had looked at the picture and said for my God/karma/goodness/fellowship of man I will aid these poor suffering people, would they not have done much better? Would it not have spoken volumes more about what they believed in and why...

Unfortunately, most people writing these books and dialogue are of the former kind. What I like to term the "Emotion from Nowhere" kind.

I am not the charity kind of person. To be perfectly frank, I don't entirely believe in charity. I give freely when asked (sometimes as many of my friends will tell you too freely and needlessly). But I don't actually believe charities tackle the root of the problem. For each individual charity helps I acknowledge that is a good deed. But the problem remains. Charities do not end droughts, charities do not create jobs and charities do not get rid of human meanness.

However, I am not an emotion from nowhere person. I just get angry at people who are. As was expressed many times through the book.



Child in africa rolls in its sleep into a fire. God's fault, he didn't make us fireproof.

The defence? Oh he had a purpose! God surely had a purpose?

What?

erm... we don't know...maybe...err... yeah....................BUT he had a purpose! -_-

someone please shoot me in the head...


And ever notice it's always these sensational kind of topics they love? Drought! Famine! War! Some famous celeb! But simple things right in front of our eyes - one out of six people are major depressive, think about that. Among all your friends, if you had thirty - 5 are majorly depressed. The divorce rate in America is approaching one out of two - that is an insanely exotic number! The amount of distress that is caused - baffling. There are homeless people right round the corner. People are overworked, stressed, few people get to do what they want with their lives (unless you come from a happy Western country and your uni, medical bills etc are all payed for and even then you may not be that lucky) Blah blah blah blah... the Philosopher's never talk about that!


So, this is my take on the matter. The fundamental problem with this discussion should be very obviously glaring - No one knows what God is like!

People against make the mistake thinking that their morals and standards are the right ones. I will discuss in a moment how a baby rolling into a fire could be anything other than evil. But yes, because we say it should not be so, God is wrong. Please remove him from existence.

People for make the mistake of not considering what God is like. My God is all benevolent and all loving and all knowing and all powerful and rolls babies into fires.


Guys, guys! Time out! What may God actually think?
For one life isn't meant to be played out like a Mc Donald's Happy Meal ad.
Life isn't really meant to be lived merely for the Mc Donald's feeling either.
Which is what most of these philosophers like to argue for. My life ain't perfect. Let's sue God (a very widespread concept now due to America's litigatious society)
Life gets really really miserable if all you want is that Mc Donald's feeling - I'm glad that many portions of society are actually shaking awake from that.

So, wait. God isn't very big on the continuous enjoyment thing then? What is he big on? ... Well what does Buddha say being one of the contenders for Top Dog. Life is Suffering the first tenet of Buddhism. Look around you. He was right. God is big on suffering??? Not quite that either.

God is big on... Living! God measures effort and work and achievement. God measures acts of love and acts with meaning. So - a baby rolls into a fire. Who is to blame? God (if there was anyone to blame and assuming he exists) What would we like to happen and why won't it happen and what God hopes will happen.

(a) Pain. The baby screams in pain. Anyone normal would cringe and the sound of that. Would you rather God took away the pain sensation and never called for help? Let the baby lie there till its charred black to be found later? Maybe you say, considering the life the child is in for.

(b) Life of the child. This is the debating point. The child is not going to lead a terrific life. Unable to go out and socialise, unable to perform many many functions, probably shunned by the society as some demonised horror and etc. What kind of God allows that?
I argue that most of the suffering is human induced. A family can learn to live with her support her. Many families do. Children who are autistic, bedridden members, etc a whole slew of people. People can befriend a burnt child, a scarred child.
Instead our entire human society has been engineered to view the child as cursed, ugly, unfit for life and impediment to instant gratification.

Does God care? Well this is where it becomes my opinion. I think God does care. I think God wants the child to be able to learn that despite everything, he/she can live and can do something worthwhile. I think that God would like the child to realisehe/she can still be happy about things. I believe God can value the struggle to live. I think God also values those who help her. Every kind word, every tear wept, every selfless act.

I think God values this more than the misery that this life will encounter. Why is this man blind? the disciples asked Jesus. I don't like quoting from the bible too much. But that is essentially what we all ask. Why did she get burned? Why did she get raped? Why was he tortured to death? Why is there famine? and the disciples ask Who's sin was it? His or his parents. We no longer blame people for the tragedies that happen in their lives. But we are still looking for someone to blame. Sue God! We cry today. Sue him for mismanaging his creation. Neither of their sins but that the glory of God may be revealed! Jesus answered. If indeed God could possibly be reflected in good deeds, then yes in the burnt child's life, I believe that God can be revealed.

So this is the conclusions I surmise. God has given everyone an amount of control. You control your voice, your actions, your thoughts. These are yours and no one elses.

If you rape a girl, murder, cheat, so on. God cannot stop you. If he did he would take away what makes you you. You would just be him. If he took it away from one he might have to take it away from everyone. If he destroyed all those who commited sin, maybe he would have to destroy everyone. Can you see through the eyes of a God? But God sees the value in people when they support a rape victim. God sees love, and things that bind people together.
For me this is a personal experience with my mom. No, she wasn't raped, she was snatch-thieved. And once she had fallen down and had a concussion and my 3 year old baby brother was left wailing on the road. This was a terrible event. My mother is the foundation stone of my family. Without her we are apart and separate. She also earns more than half of the family income and that night she came maybe inches from death (milimetres maybe if you count it in brain swelling and bleeding terms). My father was stark raving angry. So was I and my brother. And all of us were helpless. But I remember clearly, that we had all been in one room then. An occurence rare for my family. We were then more than any other night, truly, a family. We were preparing to help each other to support each other whatever happened. What do you value? Sin and evil commited from a dangerous snatch theft? Or the binding together of a family?
Evil can be overcome with good. Trite but true. And God lets us do it. To let us know WE are strong. WE can be alive.
And never forget as stupid as it sounds. God cared as much for the idiot who stole my mom's bad as he did for my mom. As much for the rapist as the victim. The murderer as the dead. We never care about the torture they endure. We don't care. A rapist is a rapist is a rapist. Try. Can you even gain a scrap of pity for a rapist? a child molester? a serial killer? I can't. An all loving God can. If you can't do that and understand that, why are we trying to evaluate God's choices? not only do we not know enough, I think that we are not capable of ever knowing.


There that is my argument for the Existence of Evil. I don't know. But I think it is pretty strong. At least it brings it back to the same question. Do you believe in God? The system works if he exists. The system works if he doesn't. And his existence is not dependent on whatever you believe in anyway. So take that you damned Philosophical Reader Text writers!

Why I'm about to start again!

Because after a long time of enjoying myself not having to type anything into a blog and enjoying my life as it passes by (more or less) I picked up a philosophy book today and it irritated me that no one has given answers that I have thought of! Okay, that wasn't for me to sound clever. That was the shock that there was no mention of anything even close to my ideas and several arguments given to defend the views and beliefs that I hold were, sacrificing prudence here, PATHETIC!

I was insulted that morons could snipe such beautiful concepts because they were a bunch of jaded and angry people who could think of nothing to do with their life and fueled by all this emotion from nowhere. And I was insulted further morons did not think about what they were doing or standing up for!

Granted, no one can understand everything. And you don't have to understand something to believe in it (a concept I am still trying to tangle with) And okay, not all the writers submitted works without any points whatsoever. There were some good points raised. But the book was so one sided!!!

Okay, what's the real reason I'm pissed? It was a university reading booklet - God, Morality and Ethics or something like that. Each topic had two articles, one written by an atheist and one written by a theist. Basically all I read was - Atheist: there's a lot of bullshit we don't understand and since we're miserable and our lives aren't great like the Mc Donald ads paint how heaven ought to be, there can be no God. Theist: We can't say bullshit cos we are too holy, but yeah God works in mysterious ways, we can't come up with a good theory combining everything and we'll apologise so that we look like we know we are wrong and give you a foolish smile like we're going to do said stupid thing anyway.

What kind of stupid, lopsided, jaded, excuse to poke fun at religious people is this crap we are teaching what are meant to be the future leading generation? Sigh...

So. As an effort to fight stupidity. As an effort to contribute to the equation that is summation of human knowledge, I have decided I will try type upon some of these topics. Maybe I don't know much, and I'll look like an idiot. But, so what? I wouldn't be the first.

Here we go...