On the sense of Purpose

I like to imagine sometimes that whatever bad happens, there must be a bigger picture somewhere, and there must be something good to draw out of it. I even like to think of hardship as a helpful tool to grow as a person, or that it is one of life’s tests... That there is a reason behind everything that happens, if only we can recognise what it is, which means taking the time to understand every face of a situation.

Well, since about last night, I’ve never doubted such a theory more. It almost makes more sense to think we’re all random, just as this world is despite its inherent natural balance, and it just happens that most people are rotten, and you just have to live with it or drown. You drown, you die, end of. There’s nothing more to it, and everything that seems to make sense is part of human make-belief - the need to place a meaning on things for ourselves to make the randomness of life more bearable.

So the reason we invented work, for instance, is to give ourselves the shadow of some purpose in life, really, so we have something to do while alive. If we didn’t, then we’d just get bored, I suppose. Boredom can easily lead to depression, and most people would just end up killing themselves, one way or another. Without purpose, a thinking beast becomes a time bomb. There’s no telling when or how it’ll blow. It could wipe itself out, or it could take others down as well. And all that because of a lack of purpose, whose impact on us is named depression.

When I was little, my main purpose in life was simple, albeit impossible to achieve, but then kids tend to have great dreams that are only dashed later down the line. I lived to escape into a fantasy world. Failing this, I could see myself becoming an ‘actress’, so I would keep as close to the fantasy illusion as possible, you see. Life happened, of course, and with it waltzed in a set of unpredictable changes in circumstances. I didn’t get to die when I realised I would never escape reality, so for a long while I lost all sense of purpose. I got depressed. Surprise, surprise.

Then the writing kicked in, and I found myself a new purpose in life that allowed me to cope better with this reality for a while. If I didn’t have that delusion of a purpose in mind, then what would be the point in anything? This is a very serious issue, because it questions the core of what we are, as a species in this world, and it digs into the heart of the mind.

Thinking and reason coupled with the ability to feel emotions leads to the intrinsic need for a sense of purpose. This begs the question: are we doomed to live forever in a prison of delusions?

If you need to convince yourself that what you do fills a purpose in life, then it is a delusion, but only if the premise entails that we are all here by chance, down a chain of very natural events. The whole Darwin Theory, to put it simply, here.

Over the last few months, I realized that there were things, even the silliest things, about society that I liked. This seems to have re-enforced the belief I have in humanity as a whole. Sure, a majority will always be corrupt to an extent and easily swayed, but there are others out there trying more than I could ever try. The ‘doers’ of this world aren’t all bad. Some have ideals close to mine, but in reality they are not free to change everything at once.

The truth about the human condition is that unless you can take into account every single factor that makes us, you couldn’t get to a perfected solution. Reason or logic is what readily sets us apart from all other creatures in the world, but it represents only aspect of human nature.
Conveniently focusing on only a few aspects of human nature, such as throwing logic as the core vector in an attempt to get to a perfected society - as though logic itself had the power to make everything right- is doomed to be narrow-minded and flawed.

Logic is what we make of it, which is why most people who do possess a high degree of logic, will willingly throw it away or use it to further their corruption.

More often than not we let our instincts or wants dictate our behaviour when we should be ruling with our brains. If everyone just followed their head then we could boast about being the superior species. Until then all we are, really, is a bunch of fancy monkeys with delusions of grandeur.

We find creatures using basic tools most facinating and sometimes it seems even extraordinary. With the brains we have all the technology we come up with through the ages is little more than equivalent to the chimpanzee learning to use a stick as a feeding tool. Therefore being able to create or invent fancy things can’t be the determining factor in proving that we, humans, are superior to any other species or that we’re any more special in any way. Our capacities are merely proportional to our biological constitution. I read it before somewhere and I now agree that what can make us special and superior to any other creature is our ability to find true meaning behind everything around us and the very things we create or do. Not just any meaning, though, but true meaning. Reasoning. Logics. Striving to shed away the mechanics of instincts and wants to act as logically and independently as humanly possible.

Harsh facts

Once upon a time white people thought that the whole world belong to them and was waiting for them to conquer it. Everything else, every other culture was beneath them and so it was that people with different skin colours were turned into slaves or regarded more as obscene creatures than human beings. It was the awakening age, minutes away from our time today, before technology gave us a false sense of security and power over nature. 

You would be forgiven for thinking that our time, the age of apotheosis as I like to think it, has come to learn from mistakes of the past and that the white man regards his fellow black, indian or chinese companion as equal. That he is trying, at least. Through the lens of the media and society as a whole, it would seem that things have changed for the better or working toward a new world based on acceptance. It would be forgetting the white man in power. The puppet master. He wants us to believe a lot of things and everything he lets you see is always what he wishes you to see- not what you ought to see. When something is too good to be true it usually is and the same goes with the notion of truth. If something is too obvious or taken for granted then one must stop and think carefully, try and see beyond the veil of words and pretence.

Unless this is done as we live through our time we will remain blind. I don’t understand why or how we got to this, all I know is that far from reaching acceptance, we are pushing everybody against one another. A subtle, pernicious poison runs through the many veins of societies and I have doubts whether it can be stopped now. This is why our time is the apotheosis age, where all the loose ends finally come together.

Anyway, I went for a walk through the park on the way back and soaked up some of the sun. A vain attempt at cheering myself up. I felt the weight of solitude on me as though the tabby skies had suddenly collapsed and I waited for them to swallow me whole. But they wouldn’t.

 

09/06/08

There is a heavy burden to carry when one is able to see the truth for what it is. It’s also a tiring exercise most of the time and I have seen but mere glimpses of reality in its truthfulness, without the intricate layers of illusion and lies covering it. I don’t like what I’ve seen so far; in fact, I suspect that it would be far more agreable to ignore what lies beyond the things we see, what we think or what we falsly take for knowledge. I wonder: am I going against nature itself if one is to look at this exercise as more of an exception compared to what a majority of other individuals would do or am I in fact becoming more human for trying to develop the one thing that differenciate us so much from any other creatures- our faculty to think coherently and logically?

I shared my slight illumination of yesterday with my mother and, surprisingly enough, she understood what I was trying to say. She was amazed that I had come to understand certain things only now and that’s when I realised part of why she was the way she was. If anything, my quest isn’t such a random fancy I woke up with out of the blue but rather a predisposition either inherited from her or merely conditioned by my living with her all my life. Either way she must play an important role in the manner my thoughts are shaped.

I can no longer think without almost picturing lines and geometry within my own mind as though everything- absolutely everything- stemed from a logical base which you can hope to reach if only you can follow the threads often buried in messy knots. The game of following logical threads that lead to a deeper meaning of a notion or theory appeals greatly to me and although it makes perfect natural sense in my mind I fear that it would be almost impossible to explain how much of a joy it is for me.

The downside of logics, as I’ve felt before, is that it is one of the most ruthless tools for it will only show you bare truth removed from any other niceness we tend to wrap it under. It seems we have this need to dilute reality, especially what is simply the truth, in order to manage existence. It appears much akin to a necessary coping mechanism we use without even noticing most of the time but there are people who have perfected the art of masking truths so well that others cannot even start to look for the real thing even if they ever wanted to. It is slowly dawning on me that I might not be cut out for the truth; I’m just not strong enough as a person to carry such a burden, knowing that it means I have to chip away at the safe haven ignorance provides. Ignorance or indifference, for that matter. There are many who, far from being ignorant or lacking the skills to see beyond the shams, would rather remain indifferent. But then I’m only going to be alive once and I’ll only have that brain for a given time and what a waste it would be not to try everything I humanly can to uncover its secrets or the power it wields from within. Give me a pointless quest anytime as a substitute to the mere acceptance of what a person ought to be according to a majority that is ignorant enough to follow the pack blindly without questions.

What frightens me most is the leap between the relatively safe comfort of beliefs and man-made ideals which, I realise now, is more or less akin to endoctrination, and that of bare reality, where one can see that there is only the person and what that person chooses to do. Yes, I suppose what bothers me is mostly that from now on I can no longer delude myself into projecting a God in the empty skies or give supernatural meaning to anything I simply do not comprehend. The concept of a superman is very much in line with logics and man can only hope to achieve greatness and true self-reliance if he can shed away the weight of illusions behind which he hides. Having said that, and although I seem to agree with such a concept, it doesn’t do much to quench my inner fears of having to face a life where there is nothing else but me and the people around me. And logics. Out goes magic, and heavens, and hells and other lullabies created to either sooth the mind or as a means of control over the masses. Illusions and beliefs have been so deeply engrained in me that not only was it a monstrous hurdle to shed a big chunk away from my brain but it also leaves me with the conscience that what I am left with might well be glimpses of true knowledge but it doesn’t change the fact that such true knowledge is far less appealing to me than candyfloss shams I was used to for so long. It is worth it, no doubt about that, of course, but one must be prepared for a life of sober lucidity with no coming back to the safety of illusions...

If there is no such thing as a soul in a religious light then there must be at least two different parts that make up a person. I have been able to distinguish the one I define as the brain, the clockwork side of man, where logics and abilities lie. It is, I think, the most reliable part of us for it relies solely on logics and reaon. But then I have difficulties identifying the other part, the one we tend to listen to more readily and which is often the cause of our mishaps. If I am to follow that thread for lack of any better or clearer one, I would say that it is in fact the part we often call the soul, the heart or spirit. I tend to think that this other side is closer to what we call our personality or social self. The one that feels. Thus, I like picturing one side as an intricate clockwork, a living machine, whereas the other is flimsier, made up of social conditioning and experience and therefore it would make sense that the latter would be so keen to nurture prejudices, grudges but also attachment and preferences. I would call it the personality, which comprises feelings and social projection as opposed to the brain, or biological side, which, although there must be some degree of conditioning - the learning process, for instance- is better equipped to break away from such conditioning. I would also go as far as claiming from personal experience this time that it is man’s most reliable sidekick. The other side is, by its very nature, prone to bias and fluctuations and therefore more encline to follow changing currents of all sorts. Pretty useless when one is trying to see beyond appaearances, for instance.