Completely Unnecessary

The random bullshit of a privileged white kid who takes his thoughts far too seriously and considers the world at large absurd.

[whimsical-aphorist-blog]

Concerning the existence of things, there are three things that we can do. (1) We can make claims. (2) We can dismiss claims. (3) We can withhold judgment.

For each of these three options, there is a (a) correct way and an (b) incorrect way of going about it, and knowing when to do which one. For...

[asonge]

One solution to maintaining a rational agnosticism is the use of multiple narratives. Sometimes there are no good explanations for things, but sometimes we have several which aren't justified completely, but are compatible with other things we know more about. Smelling bananas and black pepper on the box, one can say it may be a hefeweizen or just bananas and pepper. We can classify both these views as being consistent with the facts (the 2 distinct smells) and even create categories of things that smell like each thing or both things together. Straight agnosticism or disbelief is sometimes hard to maintain because we like narratives so well. In court, fights are often over narrative instead of facts. Prosecutors line up a single narrative, and sometimes defense attorneys show the range of possible (and sometimes probable) alternate narratives so that you can get a range on the bounds of possible/plausible explanations. None of these explanations has to be better than the prosecutors, but the prosecutor's must be far and away more justified than the alternatives. Sometimes historians will use this in historical method, showing conflicting plausible stories in the history to show a plausible range for skepticism.

[asonge]

Bad Arguments: "The right not to be offended"

"You don't have the right to be not offended". We've all heard this phrase, but I think that its scope is much narrower than the phrase is often used to refute.

The argument should only be applied when people are talking about legal remedies or governmental action. Whenever anyone else speaks for or against a topic out of offense, they're expressing their first amendment right. Whenever someone wants to make a law out of their desire to not be offended, that's not a sufficient cause for legal or governmental remedy. It goes without saying that most things people use the legal system for things which happen to offend them greatly, they just need other reasons that are more valid.

The argument should not be applied when people are airing grievances in public about another organization. This person is already conceding a legal or government remedy, and should be congratulated by anyone who hates frivolous lawsuits. They're already recognizing the legal right of the organization to make the decision. They think it should be legal, but they don't think it's moral or right. In other words, the concessions you think they should make have already been made unless you want to deny them their free speech.

If you use this phrase in the wrong context, it's not so much of a jump to conclude that you want the right to never feel uncomfortable *or* you want the right to never hear about things that don't already matter to you.

[asonge]

Retreat into Worldview

Last Wednesday, I presented something to my local SSA about "A Naturalistic Account for Meaning and Purpose", and had a friend of mine invite the campus Catholic priest (who brought kids, many of them seemed to be freshmen). Though I had done a lot of thinking, my notes were very rushed, but my biggest problem here was that I didn't put enough of a foundation for my entire approach. I wanted to avoid having to deal with worldview differences and present something "plausible".

During the Q&A, things devolved right into what I wanted to avoid. All the problems were couched in terms of "worldview conflicts" and I was stuck justifying my epistemology (which I do have worked out quite well), as well as justifying my metaphysical assumptions (which I do not have worked out at all, and I'm still waiting for time to learn enough to get a basic framework down).

One point of contention was about the morality of God (or lack thereof). Citing the Old Testament, some in the group challenged the morality of God. The response seemed to be the standard "you need perfect moral knowledge to condemn God". My counter-response was that the Christian who makes the argument that judging God's actions requires perfect moral knowledge must plead moral agnosticism and loses the ability to claim any moral knowledge. The response to this was that God was essentially good and so this couldn't be right. With a response like that, is any discussion at all possible? One of the things I hate most about worldview arguments is that I am required to justify the metaphysical assumptions I hold in common with theists, but the theist can afford to saw down these shared metaphysical supports by jumping to absurd assertions that they don't use in their day-to-day life. By retreating into the worldview, you're being asked to convince someone that everything they think is wrong, instead of discussing ideas one at a time.

[asonge]

Some notes from my talk

I did a talk recently for the local Secular Student Alliance chapter at the University of Louisiana - Lafayette today. I think I cross-purposed my talk without laying enough groundwork for the groundwork for the argument I was trying to make. Here are my notes.

Meaning and purpose in terms of for who and what kind

Sometimes people say that without God there can be "no meaning and purpose to life" and that "death is no longer preferable to life, so suicide can never be a bad thing". I want to set aside the euthanasia debate for now, and focus on the question of meaning and purpose.

Any atheist can come up with a cogent rebuttal here. "Do you love your family? Would you love your wife, husband, daughter, son, father, mother any more or less if you found out there is no god? Would really you find any less reason for living?" Of course, someone proposing this argument would say that it isn't what they meant, and if she is educated, may say "What I meant was metaphysical purpose."

I would like to clear something up here quickly, then. For naturalists, the natural will to live and the relationships we hold are enough to keep us going. If we are to stick with the notion of some kind of metaphysical purpose, the believer must leave his stark suicidal nihilism at the door and we all must ask ourselves "To what ends do we live our lives?". Cosmic in scope, there are a variety of Christian, much less religious accounts for meaning and purpose. I'd like to go with a specific case, then a general case here.

Specifically, I want to talk about one of the more harmful common accounts of purpose, and it's even a best-seller: Rick Warren's Purpose Driven Life. In it Rick Warren proposes that there are 2 purposes for which we live our lives, to worship God, and to get others to worship God. Rick Warren then creates a cosmic multilevel marketing scam out of Christianity. Converting others to Christ gets you a jewel in your crown, if only you could get jewels in your crown when the people you save also save people. This is common thought in many modern fundamentalist churches, and I think it does harm in that it ignores the entire rest of reality. Nothing else is *supposed* to matter in life except in the service of saving others. I think the amount of harm done by this thought is only mitigated by the hypocrisy that most of these believers just mouth the words with no intent of ever carrying them out. People are no longer ends in themselves, and everyone is infantilized into giving their free will to God without thought that they may be abdicating their moral responsibilities to an idol.

In the more general case, Christianities hold some account of meaning and purpose. There are a few properties in that they are always cosmic in scope, and apply universally to all persons. With these high stakes, theologians take stabs in the dark hoping to spear a good account of purpose and meaning that is worthy of universal application. Some use Biblical interpretations to justify getting where they want to go, and others use reason. While I think these attempts are worthy human efforts, I think they are ineffective in that they are backwards. By saying that meaning and purpose must apply universally, one opens one's self up to large mistakes from premises one tries to establish a priori or axiomatically.

What are some good ways of thinking about metaphysical purpose and meaning? I think this is a job for generic empiricism. One thing that Buddhism seems to have going for it is that it is embedded in personal experience. Generally, mindfulness can be an empiric technique used to find things that, if not true, are at least not violated by raw personal experience. Empiricism generally involves a focus on interpreting sense data to gather facts about the real world. Reason is used to bridge gaps in our sensory experience, but reason alone shouldn't be extended beyond what can be inferred through personal experience, though I include the indirect observation that scientific tools can offer as a justified personal experience.

Meaning and purpose in terms of Nietzsche and Tillich

I think there comes a time in most people's lives when they start to question the foundations of how they were raised. There are things about the world that sometimes don't make sense to us, and we start to question everything. This where Nietzsche comes in. Nietzsche didn't seek to end European Christianity, but saw it had self-destructed already and no one yet had noticed. He saw the coming danger of what I alluded to at first, a kind of complete nihilism. Nietzsche himself wasn't a nihilist, but went crazy and died before accounting much for reason and purpose. What he did give us, however, is an inspiring way to test for truth and to build our own values and this is a purpose in and of itself.

The subtitle of one of Nietzsche's books is called "philosophizing with a hammer". This alludes to an ancient practice of tapping idols with a hammer to demonstrate that they were not gods, but hollow manmade objects. Please notice that the hammer isn't for smashing. It doesn't matter that I think religions are false, what matters is *why* I think religions are false. Part of my purpose in life is to build my life on something true, and this requires a search for truth. And there are some truths to be found in deconstructing idols. Nietzsche says he isn't even the ear that listens to the hammer tapping the idol, but the ear behind the ear. He's seeking to find the truths and the faults that make up the idol and extrapolate it to other areas so that he can know what about art, culture, and even science are "lies" (and I mean that by analogy).

But I don't think this reading of Nietzsche (which may be unique to just me, I don't really know) is enough for most people. This is where I like to pull in a mainline protestant theologian, Paul Tillich. The best of Tillich, I think, is to take the truths from Christianity and abstract them completely so that atheists can understand meaning and purpose. Tillich wrote during the time of the existentialists, and is probably the best response to existentialist problems I've seen. I want to warn the godless here, though, this does contained reformed god-talk, even though Tillich himself is technically an atheist.

To Tillich, faith was very important. Faith was defined as being "grasped by ultimate concern". For Tillich, an atheist can have faith in truth, which as a kind of abstract concept, is worthy of "faith" and is not an "idol". It is in this definition if idol that I join Nietzsche and Tillich together. Nietzsche tells us to learn about idols, and Tillich helps us along in this vein as well. Tillich, however, doesn't have faith in truth, but he has faith in what he relabels as "God". To Tillich, God is defined as "being-itself". I've slightly adjusted my meaning from his, but I take being-itself to be self-aware existence rather than a metaphysical property of every piece of matter. God isn't said to exist as a being, but as a principle. To be aware of one's existence is to participate in God, and to have faith in this God, one promotes the flourishing of self-aware existence.

It is possible that truth and "being-itself" fulfill this universal requirement, and might have metaphysical justification. I won't offer that here, as I'm not a very good philosopher, but I think I've offered a reasonable account to lay rest to the claim that "without god, there is no reason for living". I would also like to mention that there is value into purposes and meanings that are bigger than one's self. By which one can mean something that is done for the benefit of many outside of immediate interest, or something good outside of one's own lifetime. This is the kind of "good" that Daniel Dennett proposes one offers that all people can do in order to add meaning to their lives. While this doesn't fulfill the universal requirement, it seems to be "good enough" to add real meaning and purpose to life. But this answer almost seems to easy.

[asonge]

What would be your response be to someone who said that philosophy is a useless practice/study, especially as a college degree?

Science is king when it comes to quantitative facts and reasoning. For many practical purposes, we don't always have access to facts and we're only left with qualitative reasoning. Reason and emperical observation still apply, but since we cannot come up with something measurable, science sometimes seems ambiguous to attack the problem. If you want a longer defense, I recommend On The Supposed Irrelevence of Philosophy

[asonge]

Whiners through History -- Langston Hughes

So, another day and another argument on Facebook brings me to this horrible quote:

We live in a country where folks are just too easily offended and this harms the fabric of our republic in ways too numerous to count. We have become a nation of whiners and not winners. Whiners fuss about pre-game prayers. Winners score touchdowns and get to date the prom queen. We need more winners and fewer whiners in America

I could unpick this, but some people think that actually analyzing attitudes and the abstract way they contribute to societal blind spots is "not fair", because they're usually the words of someone who hasn't thought much. So now, I'm going to write a short series of posts: Whiners through History. I smash paradigms like a cardboard crusher, baby.

Salvation by Langston Hughes

I was saved from sin when I was going on thirteen. But not really saved. It happened like this. There was a big revival at my Auntie Reed’s church. Every night for weeks there had been much preaching, singing, praying, and shouting, and some very hardened sinners had been brought to Christ, and the membership of the church had grown by leaps and bounds. Then just before the revival ended, they held a special meeting for children, “to bring the young lambs to the fold.” My aunt spoke of it for days ahead. That night I was escorted to the front row and placed on the mourners’ bench with all the other young sinners, who had not yet been brought to Jesus. My aunt told me that when you were saved you saw a light, and something happened to you inside! And Jesus came into your life! And God was with you from then on! She said you could see and hear and feel Jesus in your soul. I believed her. I had heard a great many old people say the same thing and it seemed to me they ought to know. So I sat there calmly in the hot, crowded church, waiting for Jesus to come to me. The preacher preached a wonderful rhythmical sermon, all moans and shouts and lonely cries and dire pictures of hell, and then he sang a song about the ninety and nine safe in the fold, but one little lamb was left out in the cold. Then he said: “Won’t you come? Won’t you come to Jesus? Young lambs, won’t you come?” And he held out his arms to all us young sinners there on the mourners’ bench. And the little girls cried. And some of them jumped up and went to Jesus right away. But most of us just sat there. A great many old people came and knelt around us and prayed, old women with jet-black faces and braided hair, old men with work-gnarled hands. And the church sang a song about the lower lights are burning, some poor sinners to be saved. And the whole building rocked with prayer and song. Still I kept waiting to see Jesus. Finally all the young people had gone to the altar and were saved, but one boy and me. He was a rounder’s son named Westley. Westley and I were surrounded by sisters and deacons praying. It was very hot in the church, and getting late now. Finally Westley said to me in a whisper: “Goddamit,  I’m tired o’ sitting here. Let’s get up and be saved.” So he got up and was saved. Then I was left all alone on the mourners’ bench. My aunt came and knelt at my knees and cried, while prayers and songs swirled all around me in the little church. The whole congregation prayed for me alone, in a mighty wail of moans and voices. And I kept waiting serenely for Jesus, waiting, waiting – but he didn’t come. I wanted to see him, but nothing happened to me. Nothing! I wanted something to happen to me, but nothing happened. I heard the songs and the minister saying: “Why don’t you come? My dear child, why don’t you come to Jesus? Jesus is waiting for you . He wants you. Why don’t you come? Sister Reed, what is this child’s name?” “Langston,” my aunt sobbed. “Langston, why don’t you come? Why don’t you come and be saved? Oh, Lamb of God! Why don’t you come?” Now it was really getting late. I began to be ashamed of myself, holding everyone up so long. I began to wonder what God thought about Westley, who certainly hadn’t seen Jesus either, but who was now sitting proudly on the platform, swinging his knickerbockered legs and grinning down at me, surrounded by deacons and old women on their knees praying. God had not struck Westley dead for taking his name in vain or for lying in the temple. So I decided that maybe to save further trouble, I’d better lie, too, and say that Jesus had come, and get up and be saved. So I got up. Suddenly the whole room broke into a sea of shouting, as they saw me rise. Waves of rejoicing swept the place. Women leaped in the air. My aunt threw her arms around me. The minister took me by the hand and led me to the platform. When things quieted down, in a hushed silence, punctuated by a few ecstatic “amens,” all the new young lambs were blessed in the name of God. Then joyous singing filled the room. That night, for the first time in my life but one – for I was a big boy twelve years old – I cried, in bed alone, and couldn’t stop. I buried my head under the quilts, but my aunt heard me. She woke up and told my uncle I was crying because the Holy Ghost had come into my life, and because I had seen Jesus. But I was really crying because I couldn’t bear to tell her that I had lied, that I had deceived everybody in the church, and hadn’t seen Jesus, and that now I didn’t believe there was a Jesus any more, since he didn’t come to help me.

Sheesh. What a whiner. Man up and just pretend, you don't have to blab it to the world, man. <sarcasm>

[lafatheists-blog]

[asonge]

lafatheists:

The atheists I know love to bring up issues like religion and politics that touch on the very roots of common world-views. The problem we know about, however, is that these issues immediately cause people to get defensive and arguing with them will often reinforce their beliefs. The weight,...

[asonge]

Harbingers of a Scientific Age

Is no one inspired by our present picture of the universe? This value of science remains unsung by singers, you are reduced to hearing not a song or poem, but an evening lecture about it. This is not yet a scientific age.

-- Richard Feynman

While nowhere near pervasive, we are seeing the talents from the humanities celebrating science and skepticism. Could these be the harbingers of a new scientific age? How sudden would a shift in social milieux be?

[asonge]

Don't stop enemies from making mistakes

The nicest non-theist group in the country announced that they are going to sue an Arkansas bus ad company and the bus system. These are the guys with the wimpiest billboards of any non-theist group, the "Good without God? Millions are." billboard. They released all the stuff they filed with the court online.

Hemant has a nice quick summary of the case, and I won't be rehashing it here. But let's have some quotes from the exhibit, shall we?

Just a quick primer:

UCoR United Coalition of Reason - buys billboard ads for nontheist organizations)

OTMA On The Move Advertising - buys ad space froM CATA and sells it

CATA Central Arkansas Transit Authority - the government agency in charge of buses

Please be advised, further analysis will not be a one or two day process, as it will involve [...] an analysis of OTMA's insurance policies to see if they would cover the replacement of one or more CATA buses and resulting personal injuries and death, which could occur from someone possibly committing a terroristic act, such as tossing a Molotov Cocktail at the UCOR advertisement on the side of a CATA bus loaded with passengers.

So, when you put an ad out, you need to pay for the possibility that a hater would throw a molotov cocktail at the bus. They have such faith in their fellow Christians.

Subject: Ransom Offer in Response to United Coalition of Reason's Terroristic Demands

As a result of the threats from UCoR, as contained in your e-mail received last Friday afternoon, I rearranged my schedule in a valiant effort to comply with UCoR's demands and defend my client against the probability of a crushing onslaught of legal bills, financial ruin and almost certain corporate death brought about by UCoR's well coordinated threat of an impending attack if my client does not immediately satisfy UCoR's demands.

I am a SUPER-LAWYER ready to do battle, even if I have to shuffle my appointments! Even if it takes my secretary all lunch-break. Even though no matter what I do, the terrorists win!

And here is my selections from a 5-page-long passive-aggressive letter in which the rest of OTMA's bargaining power is crushed into a fine powder:

...

Or, does UCoR just want OTMA to figuratively run scared for its corporate life until it succumbs to the forces of UCoR's terroristic tactics, thereby becoming a minion used to carry out various aspects of UCoR's campaign? 

Quite honestly, I believe UCoR just needs to get over itself, quit looking for ways it thinks it is being "picked on," and quit acting like a three (3) year old child who threatens to "cause a scene, if it does not get its way." By threatening litigation every time UCoR's commercially unreasonable demands are not met or UCoR does not get advertising space on exactly the business terms it demands, UCoR is behaving childishly, irrationally and to a large degree in a terroristic manner. 

...

UCoR's actions and demands have effectively given OTMA only two choices: One, resist UCoR's demands and be killed by litigation costs; or two, agree to UCoR's demands and be killed by the financial burden of repairing damages to CATA's property incited by UCoR's advertising. UCoR's despicable conduct has placed OTMA in a conundrum in which the only way out is through incursion of commercially unreasonable risk and almost certain corporate death. 

...

I previously speculated UCoR's intent here was not to actually obtain paid advertising, but rather to obtain free publicity by filing a lawsuit against CATA and OTMA. I now possess a firmly held belief that UCoR's actions have shown my previous speculation to now be reality. Further, just as I do not understand the tactics of other terrorist organizations, I do not know exactly what UCoR hopes to gain by killing OTMA other than the satisfaction of killing a "manufactured foe" or lending increased credibility to UCoR's future threats of corporate death for larger prey with more financial resources.

...

If OTMA must face its death either way, then OTMA chooses to die fighting a bully and resisting the wholly unreasonable terms sought to be imposed upon it by UCoR.

...

Although my client is now prepared to die at the hands of UCoR and its army of publicists, picketers and lawyers, I have included herewith a standard sub-lease agreement for UCoR's requested advertising, as a last ditch effort to spare my client's life and appease UCoR.

Seriously, the nicest group promoting non-theism (atheism) out there...with the most weak-tea milquetoast of the bunch. American Atheists or the FFRF needs to join in on this and submit ads for the fun of it. Solidarity!

[lafatheists-blog]

[asonge]

lafatheists:

The Louisiana Science Education Act of 2008 is probably one of the most deceptively-named bills. It allows teachers to bring in “supplemental materials” to approved texts in order to promote “skepticism and critical thinking”. This is code language for allowing creationist teachers to bring in creationist teaching materials.

Because of the way the law is structured and because of the way the Supreme Court of the United States has ruled recently, standing against a teacher will be very hard to acquire in order to file a lawsuit. Enter Zack Kopplin, with an effort to repeal the law for his senior project at Baton Rouge Magnet High School. This finally seems to be gaining momentum. Congratulations to Zack Kopplin, The Louisiana Coalition for Science, and the National Center for Science Education. Hopefully our students in Louisiana can see some changes on this soon.

[asonge]

Brother Sam compares Huck Finn to Jesus and comes up wanting more from Jesus.

Preach it, brother sam!

[asonge]

Of Flag-burning Douchebags and Dangerous Mobs

The free speech of douche-bags are a test for American values that we have failed. Let not the irony of a mob intimidating and shouting down someone in "Free Speech Alley" on a university campus escape you.

I'm really disappointed in the recent mobs at LSU, my almost mater (in the sense that I dropped out after 2 years). A self-righteous douche-bag attached himself to some lofty causes and decided to hold a protest to burn the United States flag.

When running into something like this, there are 2 types of effective weapons: apathy or indifference, and flat out ridicule. This mob looked unwilling to even hear what this guy had to say. That mob looked way too uncomfortable with the possibility of what this guy saying being true.

[asonge]

I'm so deep that only in my sleep do the secrets that I keep float to the surface. So I hold them down 'til they don't make a sound like the accidentally drowned, except on purpose. And when I wake up in the morning I tell myself "Today I'll make a change". But falling in my bed at night I think what a beautiful day to stay the same.

David Bazan, Don't Change, Strange Negotiations

[asonge]

Silence is Paternalism

Well, some people just need their religion.

There is a common position among humanists/atheists/skeptics who want to keep their beliefs to themselves. These people often decry even the most tame billboards that advocates and activists erect. They pride themselves on non-evangelism, consider any public display of unbelief as petty (it should be a private matter), and eschew any type of organization.

In effect, they withhold information from the marketplace of ideas. This helps maintain the current atmosphere, where believers are aided in insulating themselves from alternative ideas. Their ideas are reinforced in the slurry of acceptable mainstream opinions.

Those who are wrong and don't understand the world as well as we do wouldn't know what to do with the information we possess. They wouldn't ever change their mind.

I've heard variations on this theme many times, and this should be called out for what it is. This argument advocates paternalism. The one who makes it is saying that you know better than the other person and can filter their information for them. People of all world-views have the responsibility to advertise the truth that they claim to possess. It is part of the principle of informed consent that all people should have the right to be exposed to. On a personal level, one should be open in offering opinions, but obviously not force them on people. The atheists who go too far in this regard are rare, and for the most part, someone can rationally argue with such people.

Why does this paternalism bother me so much? I was once a very firm, enthusiastic believer. I'm sure I had doubts, but I had mastered the arts of suppression and cognitive dissonance. If I were never challenged on my beliefs, I would've never given up my beliefs, despite the fact that I was depressed and I felt trapped by them. I would've never been the happy humanist/atheist I am now.

People who don't believe and who are silent are assenting to the status quo. As someone who seeks the truth, "Keep your religion to yourself" seems hypocritical to me (read religion here as the more expansive "world-view"). "Don't shove religion down others' throats" seems like a more accurate statement because in order to make good decisions, people need to have information...and that goes both ways. The religious should never be silent either.

[asonge]

Perspective

The human body contains about 100 trillion cells. 10 trillion of these are human cells. 90 trillion are bacteria. The human body provides the environment and provides many essential services for the bacteria including temperature control, food delivery, waste disposal, and neighborhood security. In exchange they help us digest food.

Are we primarily intelligent incubators for bacteria?

[essentialatheism]

[asonge]

Ultimate authority does not an objective morality make. Good jorb on your deconversion, and a long, health life to you and yours.

essentialatheism:

I want to take a moment to discuss morality. One of the most difficult things for me when leaving religion was getting my moral footing. There are those who say that atheism is amoral, immoral, and morally relativistic. But it was religious indoctrination itself that caused my confusion about...

[asonge]

Existential Abyss: a Refiner's Fire

You are going to die. You are going to die, and no matter what you believe, you do not know what follows. These immutable and unanswerable statements about existence draw contrast on ideas about the most basic aspects of life: in particular meaning and purpose. These statements often bring about the abyss, a dark nothingness that looms over life itself.

Reactions to the abyss act as sort of a refiner's fire in the pursuit of truth, beauty, and knowledge. Not everyone faces the abyss, some people are able to live their lives and ignore or avoid these questions through distractions of life. Our ancestors imagined what lay beyond the abyss, as if it were only a veil, and they wished "revealed truth" upon the masses. It's uncomfortable for people to think that it's likely that consciousness will end. The irony is, while you won't experience the abyss (annihilation after death), this reassurance does not belay the irrational fear of ceasing to be.

I was scared as hell and scared of hell.

When I was 18, I started my long cold stare into the abyss. I had found my entire account of reality to be completely baseless and actually incongruent with what I observed around me (in short, the problem of evil). I found my beliefs were all stripped away by directly confronting reality, and I was scared as hell and scared of hell. Slowly, I found myself being ripped bare, but you know that to find the truth you can't stop looking into the abyss permanently. It taunts you, but to give up on the abyss for more than what is necessary is to be dishonest and to give up on truth. I found myself left as a vague deist liberal husk, and for a time I mourned the lost opportunities in my life. I sacrificed all manner of personal gratification in supplication to a god that is a cartoon character. The rest of my life seemed meaningless, and I felt crushed under the burden of the expectations of others. I was so smart, I should've been doing something with my life. My life was a waste, but I was going to waste it on myself no matter how bad it made me feel.

The world isn't good, the world isn't evil, the world is completely indifferent to your existence.

At 20, after dropping out of school, I started reading Kurt Vonnegut. He gave voice to my fears that I had come to believe: the world isn't good, the world isn't evil, the world is completely indifferent to your existence. Somehow, I felt liberated. It rains on the just and unjust alike, and it was up to me to make my own life livable. I learned to laugh in the face of the abyss. I learned to appreciate the cosmic joke of self-aware existence.

While this was going on, I had started to see a therapist and things were feeling a lot better, but I was still largely irrational about my future prospects. I thought I killed my future. My irrational brain couldn't conceive of a world where I was self-sufficient. Medication finally got me over that hump, but I really despise that medication...my brain no longer worked the way it used to, and after I felt good enough I stopped taking it and began the long process of creating a life worth living.

Once I set out to begin my new journey, I learned to appreciate the abyss. I look into it as often as I look into a mirror. I laugh at it, and it laughs back. One day, it will have the last laugh, but until then I have meaning and purpose in those around me. I can make people around me happy, I can teach people, and I can argue the minutiae of abstract and abstruse topics. The only way to find real fulfillment is to subject it to the abyss. It will burn away all the impurities and leave you with only the things you need to survive.