Nothing in Particular

"Not until the last priest is strangled with the entrails of the last king, will mankind truly be free." - Slogan from the French Revolution

Hey ya'all, this is a quote that a history teacher buddy of mine sent me, pretty interesting and I do believe that there is a lot of truth to it, but it is a little bit extreme. I think that mankind will truly be free when people in power stop abusing their power to oppress other people, regardless of whatever God or profession they profess. So I haven't written in a while, but it's been a busy two months since my last post. My girlfriend and me got into a huge fight, I cussed at her, she wasn't talking to me, I moved out while she was at work, then got asked to leave the place I moved into the very same day. Then, later on that night, my girlfriend stopped by and over the next few days, we made up, but I still decided to move out and move back to my dad's house, a fortunate decision, considering my unemployment ran out about a month ago and I wouldn't of been able to pay rent at my girlfriends or at the place I moved to anyway. God works in mysterious ways I guess, and I guess that this is where I'm supposed to be right now. I just got back from my girlfriend's, where I have been the past two weeks, so as you can see, we are doing very well right now, all things considered. What else is going on? I finally signed up to take the GRE test, I take it November 22, the countdown has begun. I will have to study immensely these next two weeks if I want to ace the thing. But I have been studying for the past 6 months now, so as long as I buckle down now and put my nose to the grindstone for 13 more days, I think that I should be fine. I may go study right now after I'm done writing this little tidbit. I also went to homecoming in this time period, since I last wrote. It was awesome, as always, saw basically everybody I wanted to see and then some and stayed with my bro Demitrius, and it's always good to see him.

I guess that's enough about me, time to talk philosophy now, and the subject that has been on my mind as of late, and even before that, before I even knew that it was on my mind, is the subject of paradox. I don't know if any philosopher has really talked about the concept of paradox as much as it should be talked about, it's usually a subject for mathematicians and eastern philosophers, it doesn’t get a lot of press in western philosophy, at least not any western philosophy that I have studied, and it doesn't seem to get a lot of talk in abrahamic religious circles either, at least not as much as it should, considering that if you look at the abrahamic faiths, the concept of paradox seems to be almost at the core of a lot of the stories the books tell. The story of Abraham for example, the whole freaking story is a paradox and maybe the only western philosopher who has even touched on this subject is Kierkegaard, in is fear and trembling and panegyric upon Abraham. God guarantees that Abraham will have descendents as multiple as the stars in the sky and the first thing that Abraham has to do in order to fulfill his agreement with Elohim is to mutilate the one part of his body capable of physiologically fulfilling this request, circumcision. Once Abraham has his son, he is told by this very same god to sacrifice his son. Stars in the sky, first you want me to mutilate my peanus and then when I do finally have a son by some miracle, you want me to kill him?!?!? If this isn't paradox, then I don’t' know what is. Then the story of Jesus is totally paradoxical, Nietzsche said it best, God dying on a cross is a super paradox, how can God #1) die and #2) by being nailed to a cross like a common criminal?!?!? It seems like this god that the abrahamic faiths worship seems to have a fixation on death, people say they can't understand the Islamic idea of martyrdom that is the fad today in the Islamic world, but how can they not when it has it's roots in the very book they listen to at synagogue or in church? God wants Abraham to kill his son, god kills the firstborn sons of the Egyptians, god commands the Israelites repeatedly to slaughter, leave no one alive, the Canaanites who are occupying the Israelites so called promised land, god commands his own son to die, supposedly for the sins of the world, and god commands Muhammad to kill the people trying to kill him and stop him from unifying and setting up the Islamic state in 7th century Arabia, god wants the Christians to go on crusades in the middle ages and kill the infidels who are conquering the middle east and free the holy land and especially Jerusalem and vice versa with the Muslims, and today, I’m sure you would hear Jews, Christians, and Muslims all giving a similar religious justification for their acts of murderous violence against each other. I would like to say that this is not God talking, but the devil impersonating and deceiving the people into believing god wants them to kill each other, but the precedent is set in the very holy books themselves and most especially in the foundation story of all three religions, the story of Abraham! but also in this story, god calls back Abraham and says that he was just testing his faith, he wanted to see if Abraham would give up that which was most important to him in the entire world for this God, how many of these so called abrahamic people would do the same today. I couldn't, I wouldn't, but unless you do, you are an idolater, the whole world is a bunch of idolaters until they give up or are willing to give up that which is most important in their existence for God, that is why Abraham was the first true worshipper of god and not an idolater, that is why shirk is the most grievous sin in the abrahamic religion and why the first four commandments are what they are and why Jesus had to die, because they each teach that you must give up or be willing to give up everything for god, it's got nothing to do with the theory of atonement or worshipping images or holding onto a piece of land, it is about giving up that which one holds most dear for God. That is the true meaning of idolatry and not being an idolater. I can think of maybe a few people that would actually do this and have done this throughout history, but all the followers of the faiths of the world are hypocrites because none of them can even understand this and none of them do it. that's the true meaning of shirk, associating partners with god, it's about priorities and more than that, it's about sacrificing your priorities for the number one priority, the will of God. So what does all this have to do with paradox, well, not much really, I kinda digressed there for a minute, but the stories that you hear in the books are trying to get this point across.

Anyways, what I originally wanted to say is that the nature of existence itself is a paradox. It is a paradox that existence even exists, we are a paradox because we are an infinite, eternal, unified, spiritual being, but we experience ourselves as a finite, temporal, disconnected and individual, physical being and furthermore, we experience our God-ness through our non-God-ness. Do you know what I’m saying? Another example, we experience our self, we define our self, all of the things that make up our self, what I call myself, are totally and entirely composed of elements and fragments of non-self. Think about this. The Buddhists call this reality interdependent arising. it's not about nature or nurture either. If we define ourselves by our consciousness, our mind so to speak, that mind is composed entirely of experiences and language and images that we have gained through the 'other'. This is a paradox, that we literally define ourselves by our relationship to the 'other', or non-self. I may be getting cartesianistically dualistic here, but I’m trying to prove my point about paradox. let me think of another example...what a minute...let me get a beer and go to the bathroom first....I’ll be right back...ahh, that's better, gotta love those corona's, the Budweiser’s of Mexico, anyways, last example and then I’m done for the day. we'll two more and then I’m done for the day, but their related so their kinda like one and two at the same time (is that a paradox?!? joke for Marie) but beer, at the same time it quenches your thirst, it dehydrates you. It’s like salt water, you can die of dehydration by drinking saltwater, isn't that a paradox. Maybe not as far as the core of what reality or what the self is, but it's still a neat paradox nonetheless. But breathing, every breath you take, which you need to sustain life, brings you one breath closer to death, literally and physiologically. The oxidation that happens to your lungs with every breath you breathe is actually slowly killing you. I saw this on the discovery channel or something. Your lungs get oxidized with oxygen, so oxygen kills you. So at the same time, every breath you take is extending your life and decreasing your life, paradox built into the very heart of human existence, not just from a spiritual, but also from a physiological point of view. the same thing with beer and salt water, it quenches your thirst but at the same time makes you more thirsty, the same thing with your heartbeat, with every pump it keeps you alive, but with every pump it brings you closer to that day when your heart will no longer pump. All of life is bringing you closer to death. Isn’t this one of the biggest paradoxes of them all?