"The way to despair is to renounce having any type of experience."
Flannery O'Connor
-So, honey, we came to the scene. We saw each other. Something in each of us attracted the other. We investigated each other by making small talks and occasional heavy conversations while relentlessly observing each other's reactions. We fell in love. And the rest was history. Like Julius Caesar of yore, we came, we saw and we conquered (each other). The whole process sounded simple, but for me, after one disastrous encounter after another, and after so much water went over the dam, I finally figured out the dynamics of human relationships. This came after I had accidentally come across a principle taken from forensics which bears the name Locard's Principle of Exchange.
Basically the principle states that whenever a crime occurs, the perpetrator leaves something of him and takes something with him from the crime scene. We humans are both takers and givers. We take something from the environment and leave traces of us behind. The whole process and purpose of living for humans, the most conscious and self-aware organisms on this planet, is leaving behind a legacy of durability and goodness. Every one of us aspires to do so, but only a few are able to realize their dreams. Most of us, at best, are only able to leave traces of ourselves via our offsprings. From that standpoint, most of us are no better than lower forms of life. Those who accept their inability to do anything more than just procreation are okay in the sense that they go through the motion of living and believing in the lies and myths peddled by their religious and political leaders. They are blissfully serene as they approach the end of their days.
Others who know that life is more than just procreation and following the imperatives of biology would struggle to engage in acts of creation via the pursuit of power, love and charity, arts, or knowledge. Those who are successful in the struggle are the happy ones. There is nothing grander than self-actualization, being able to produce something of lasting value and goodness. Those who are not successful are miserable and afflicted with all kinds of neuroses: self-aggrandizement, delusions, chronic lies and slanders, self-hatred, envy, and self-destruction. The most horrifying and saddest feeling a human can have is an inability to accept that there are other humans who are better than he is.
-Sorry that I have to ask you this, but what "type" of human are you?
-Don't you know?
-No, I don't. We just met recently. This is our third time together.
-I don't believe that you don't know who I am. You're testing me again. But that's all right. I don't mind talking about myself. Like all humans, I want to be understood, accepted and loved, but if that's not happening, I would not fall apart because after a long struggle, I have understood, accepted, and loved myself. I don't need anybody else to validate and confirm who I think I am. After having said that, however, I still find it at times very comical to see the stupid and the ignorant get on the Internet and expound their "opinions". But I remind myself that, as expressed in the Desiderata, the stupid and the ignorant have the right, as I do, to say what is on their mind as long as it is backed up by facts and sound logic. If they engage in malicious libels, there are always the courts of laws to curb their behaviors. The Internet should be the market place of ideas. May the most logical and sensible ideas triumph over the others. Censorship and thought policing are indications of a fear of the ideas of others and a lack of confidence of one's own. Censorship is cowardice. Thought policing reflects the poverty of intellect. Those who fear discussions about politics and religion don't really have strong convictions. They fear counter-arguments. They are afraid of unvarnished facts and truths. They are weak thinkers. I despise without reservation those who constantly cry for censorship and thought police. Those miserable, intellectual weaklings are latent and proto-fascists at heart while outwardly crying out for civility in discourses. Let freedom of speech flourish! That's one of the reasons you and I settled in the United States. She is one of few countries in the world where freedom of speech and freedom of the press are still venerated.
-Do you think I am one of those stupid and ignorant intellectual slaves who pathetically don't know they are slaves?
-No, you are not. You are too smart for that. Your faith is just a means for you to get peace. Your faith is not an end in itself. Life itself is the end. The short life you are having. The joys your wealth is bringing. The love and generosity you are showing to the less fortunate. And the affection and love you are showing to me. Unlike the stupid and the ignorant, you understand that religion serves Man, not the other way around. After all, it was Man who invented religion. It was Man who made "God" in his own image, not the other way around as commonly taught and believed. Religion is not the end, nor are the empty and illogical and unverifiable promises about Judgment Day, salvation, heaven, paradise, reincarnation, and sundry other bullshit and lies. On the contrary, this very life we have is the end. Our very efforts to make the most and best of it are the end. Only the stupid and the ignorant would embrace religion as the end all and be all of human existence. They do so because they cannot think. They are too stupid and too ignorant to think. That's why they are willing to die for their religion, at the behest of their mind controllers.
-You are sounding like a religious fanatic yourself. Please don't go around speaking like you just did. Lesser souls would think you are the Devil incarnate and burn you at the stake. Your words would be just like pearls before swine. Swine would only know the value of food, not pearls. Stupidity and Ignorance are the two worst things a human can have. Forget that I just asked who you are. Just hold me tight and rock me to sleep.
Wissai
October 29, 2014
Lisbon, Portugal.
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