30th July 1997
Anyway, back to our scheduled boredom. Life. It's a weird game isn't it. I
mean, what is the point?
We get born. We spend the first five years examining ourselves. We then spend
a third of our lives "getting an education". Then we are expected to
just go out and get a job, get married, have kids blah blah blah.
Eventually we die.
What a waste. It isn't even as if the best thinkers get to progress to something else as a reward. No. We all die. It is about the only certainty on the planet.
So in that respect it is amazing how some people feel about death. From the grim reaper to lights at the end of the tunnel - most want to avoid it. Some even think that living in oxygen tents and sterile atmospheres is the way to beat it.
I don't exactly believe the bible (it got weird about two words into Genesis
and the New Testament is a waste of space - in my humble opinion) so people
might expect a non-believer (such as I am called) to fear death more
because I don't buy into that stuff about heaven, hell or limbo. My mom wanted
me confirmed, baptised or something with the idea that it is better safe than
sorry.
I did it. Not chickening out, but just because I don't believe it all
doesn't mean it might not be true... Better safe than sorry. It's not as if
having water poured on my head hurt. It didn't burn, so I'm happy that I'm
neither the Antichrist, a vampire nor a politician...
[incidently, I do have beliefs - just not the normal biblical ones.]
Anyhow. Nobody has risen from the dead to tell us what happens. Are we wormfood or is there a heaven or do we get reincarnated?
But, what is life. I don't think it is necessarily a struggle of the biggest
and cleverest. There are things larger than us. There are, no doubt, things
cleverer than us...maybe pigs?
It is very egotistical of us to reckon we are the cleverest entity on this
planet, or any nearby. But we humans are egotistical. For ages we just
assumed we were the centre of the universe. If that ain't ego, nothing
is!
I think life is a kind of race to self-awareness. We, humans, are the only entities that know what we are, more or less where we came from, and have the power to give life to fictional things - "God" being a good example. We can't see him/her/it, neither do we have any undisputable proof in the existance of God, but we are all supposed to believe and pray... As if our destinies are nothing to do with us, but are all marked out by some omnipotent being.
Maybe we are all fully self-aware, and the answer is this... this...
this... And religion gives us a purpose and excuse because without it
there may well be no point - and that would scare the shit out of us.