Fundamental Untruth

Once one admits to oneself that he or she no longer believes in a particular platitude, there will come the realization that one never really believed in it in the first place. The real solidity of any platitude depends entirely on one believing that they really believe. With such clarity, it becomes apparent that you wasted your time trying to convince yourself you believed in something simply because you were too fucking lazy to confront the alternative.

That's the problem with falsehoods. They are easy to comprehend. They are comforting. They strike one as worthwhile to at least pretend belief in, even if only to ignore the alternative.

Falsehoods almost always employ gross oversimplifications of reality as one of their premises. They swallow quite easily.

The alternatives to a falsehood (I will not call them truths) are not easy for the mind to comprehend. They require thinking. As one grows older, one is required to constantly revise one's world view. The alternatives tend to leave people on their own to make their own way.

Hell, it's not even really that the alternatives are 'bleak' or 'scary' or induce suicidal nihilism as many people like to pretend they do. It's just that they are hard to think about, and require you to think about them for a long time.

But that's how it is. Death isn't any easy thing. But platitudes only allow people to escape from what death is. It isn't supposed to be easy. It isn't supposed to come factory-sealed with a bunch of irrational outs that make you feel better.

That's what has pissed me off so much about people well-wishing me. Fuck you. There isn't some 'better place' where dead loved ones go. They aren't 'smiling down' or 'still with us' or any of that shit. Dead loved ones are fucking dead. The stuff they are made of no longer does the same stuff it used to do and so that particular condition of matter--consciousness--is no longer possible. Life is just an event, a single event in a universe full of almost unbelievable events. Some of the crazy shit that happens in this universe occurs on scales we can barely comprehend. The universe is much, much fucking bigger than us.

How can anyone grieve to any healthy extent with all this Lifetime movie, Ghost-Whisperer mumbo jumbo floating around? With well-meaning idiots trying to convince you that the person who has died (i.e. reverted to inert matter), has only really 'gone some other place?'

I'm kind of rambling now, but I want to make one other point: when some religious sackhead gives me the tired old litany of "evolution says life is just a random accident" I rebut on two fronts. My first reply is the more obvious: the above notion is the result of a complete misunderstanding of the theory of evolution. Speciation is not random or accidental. Natural forces act on individuals in a species and, along with the genetic variation guaranteed to individual organisms by the process of sexual reproduction, some level of random mutation makes individuals of a species slightly different. Some of those differences have no effect on survival or on ability to produce offspring. But those variations that do have an effect will either be lost from that species because the individuals bearing those traits do not survive or reproduce, or they will be preserved or even amplified in that species because those individuals bearing those traits will be apt to survive better or will reproduce more. Over time, the species will change as it accumulates more and more variations. This process just happens, the same way a bunch of dead trees growing on the precipice of a valley will be acted on by wind and gravity to eventually fall into the valley and roll to its bottom. Do we then say that some designer thought it would look nicer if all the wood lay at the bottom of the valley?

Seriously, even non-religious people when talking about evolution make the mistake of personifying Nature (capital n?). It is not an anthropomorphic force with a goal or a thought process! It's just stuff happening.

But the other front on which I take issue with the whole 'life is a random accident' objection of the religious to the reality of biological evolution is that to even call life an accident implies that life is some kind of special or abberant event that has any real consequence on a cosmic scale.

It doesn't. When the earth is barren of life, when the sun becomes too bright for photosynthesis to occur in about 500 million years; or even later when the sun enters the red dwarf stage after finally using up all its available hydrogen and begins fusing helium, consquently swelling up to engulf our planet; or even later when its possible that the Andromeda galaxy will collide with our own and its gases and matter will feed the black hole at the center of our galaxy, which will then emit so much high-energy radiation that it will likely blast our galaxy apart, or even later when the entropic process at work in the universe is finally complete and there is no longer any energy left in the universe, just inert matter--it won't have mattered that we humans were ever here, or that any living organism ever lived here. The event of life will have had less consequence on the other bodies and objects in our universe than even the planetary collision of a single smallish comet. Our advent and passing will certainly have far less consequence than the advent and passing of our sun. Accident, life is not. Life is simply an event, and a minor one at that.

So, you're here now. What the fuck are you gonna do while consciousness is possible as a result of this insignificant event?

I know what I'm going to do.

It involves heavy metal, road trips, beautiful summer days, horror movies, shooting zombies, beer, friends, family, and good food. And hopefully, casual sex. All pre-marital.

I know what I'm not going to do: I will not live in a dreamworld of platitudes that are maintained for my ignorance and comfort. I will not egotistically convince myself that there is some special plan for me and that the universe is anything other than indifferent to my existence. I will not cloud my perception with wishful thinking about the necessity and specialness of human life or any life, or convince myself that there is some vaporous essence of my personality separate from my all-too-real fleshy body and brain, or worry about some ethereal, vague immortality. I will not delude myself with notions about some 'force' or 'creator' operating in the cosmos that has a design for me.

I'm just gonna be here, learn what I can because our brains happen to be wired for curiosity; create things, because our brains derive pleasure from creating things; and fucking chill.

Fuck you for expecting anything else.