Today's Religion

I've been thinking a lot about religion over the past year, and my thinking has lead me in a direction I could not say I had anticipated. Instead of becoming more religious, I have lost my faith in God altogether.

I do not find that to be a bad thing, for obvious reasons (one being that I chose to let go of my faith myself) but instead a step in the right direction: I am making my faith (or lack thereof) my own. I am not taking what anyone else says and just agreeing with it, but I am identifying parts and pieces of what I see in the world around me and integrating them into my own collage of beliefs.

For example, I don't belong to a church anymore, or any christian organization, from which to derive my beliefs. I am around such groups, but as I recognize myself as an outsider, I feel free to openly disagree with what they say. I don't have to be swayed or directed towards something not my own, but I see and hear what is around me, and use my own discretion on what I choose to accept.

I do not believe in a god. I do not believe in morality. I do believe in people. I believe in the here and now, and to some degree the future and the past. I accept that other people do believe in God, and I have no problem with that. I am no one to try and project my beliefs onto anyone else because all I have is exactly that: my belief. It belongs to me. Mine. My own. No one else's.

And I like that. As great as it would be to be in the company of people who  share in my beliefs, I have a freedom that I could never attain among such a community. I do like to (and try to whenever such an occasion presents itself) give and receive feedback on philosophical and religious questions with open-minded individuals. Frequently, they can shed light on a perspective I previously never considered as plausible. I don't want to feel alone in the world, but I acknowledge what other people can bring to the table.

Other times, I shun away from people I fear may not be so communicable about a differing set of ideals, and I don't like confrontations that leave either party feeling belittled or pitied. Those are not positive human interactions, and I can't imagine any religion would want such an occurrence. My only conclusion is that open-mindedness is necessary in inter-faith communications. (I don't need to bring in commentary about how badly it is missing...)

Anyway, I'm very interested in what people have to say about religion in general. I don't intend to stop my search for answers here. This may be only an interlude in my quest, but this is where I am today.

Communication, Revisited

What is communication?

This is the basis of civilization, and the foundation for all human interactions. Life exists as it does today because of the effectiveness of our developed abilities to share ideas, perceptions, and emotions between people. Think about it, how can you build a house without communicating? How can ideas spread, and what education without language? Everything that involves more than one person involves communication, but yet it can still be so obscure.

While we have learned to convey the vast majority of messages amongst individuals, there are still areas in which there lies great room for improvement, and that would involve just about every communication that involves people who have emotions. Last I checked, that didn't leave anyone out of this issue. The thing is, as I mentioned before, communication crosses through filters that modify the original content into a message for the listener. This is not always good. Oftentimes it is beneficial, because it converts information coming from one person into a form that the second person can hear, but in the instances where those two messages differ, there lies the potential for conflict.

Interpretations are frequent roots of quarrels, as they relate information present with assumptions that may or may not be valid. Interpretations are not always bad, for example if I say “Meet me at two at the train station”, it would be fairly safe to assume that I mean two in the afternoon, not in the morning, unless there are other indications in the conversation that indicate otherwise. Such an assumption could save a lot of hassle, so you don’t end up wasting a few hours of the night waiting for a non-existent train to arrive.

Many times, though, this is not the case, and assumptions can get you in trouble. Many times, though, they tend to reflect the receiver more than they do the communicator. This is because it is entirely up to the receiver to make sense of the messages he or she received, and this may require supplemental information that the speaker failed to provide. So, as a result, someone may take meaning from glances, gestures, and inflictions that are simply done without any meaning or thought. And many times, a failure to act in a certain way is also received as a communication, not one that was not intended.

The key to this mess lies in distinguishing information that arrived via assumptions versus that which arrived via direct intentional language. Being able to discern the two can help someone know when to trust what they know, or when to acknowledge a certain room for error in their understanding. If it were easier to think of one’s self as being wrong, many disagreements would be avoided.

But since when is that easy?

Communication

Now this is what makes communication so strange: it doesn’t work in the sense that I can communicate my idea into your understanding. That is not how it happens. Instead, through the two disconnects, there is my struggle to articulate my ideas, to put them out into the airwaves for your collection. It requires both a sense of transparency that is hard to come by and a talent for converting a felt impression into communicable language.

From there, the thought is beyond the speaker, and it is in the hands of the listener. Now this is no simple reconversion of words into thoughts, but of images into ideas. Because, you see, when we take in words, be they written, spoken, signed, we don’t take them by themselves. If that were to be true, then they would be meaningless, as they would have no context, no significance, no relevance, and not even a hint of importance to them. No, when the waves propagate through the air and hit our eardrums, before they reach our consciousness, even, they must be made meaningful. They are translated from high-low pressure regions into thoughts, but not without the contamination of preconceptions, visual cues, or vocal inflections that may indicate anything other than exactly what is said. These things are all jumbled up together in the resulting idea that pops out as what we “heard”.

This is what makes communication so difficult, because in order to speak we must be transparent, and in order to listen we must see our own opaqueness.

This brings me to my example. Through an exchanging of words, I managed to make someone very angry with me. From her perspective, I couldn’t see where she was coming from, and the ensuing communications merely compounded the original infraction. The problem was the limiting capabilities of texting. While they are great for sharing information, they do a lousy job of sharing anything more complex than the time. I was struggling to express my perspective through a means that only shared words, nothing more, and words are easily misinterpreted. (“Why don’t you get out of here?” can mean more than one thing based on the tone in which it is said.) So I sat there, struggling to communicate that I understood what she was going through. And whether or not I was correct in my evaluation of her state, I had no way of telling her what I meant. Take it that I actually did understand, and imagine me telling her using nothing but black and white text that idea right there. It could not conceivably be interpreted correctly; she was already mad at me and had prior knowledge of me not understanding her circumstances. What are the messaged words “I know what you mean” going to do when I am up against the facts of my historical ineptitude and her emotions of feeling like I can’t possibly know, even if it was explained to me very clearly.

I like to think about what can and what cannot be communicated through the traditional means, and what I can do to remedy the miscommunications that frequent our lives. The only thing I have come up with is understanding things the first time around and then never messing up. Well, we’ll see how that works.

Religion

Religion is a funny subject. I have been consciously been avoiding the topic to this point in all of my scheming in regards to my Meaning. I felt like I had it all figured out except for this little thing called God.

That was unfortunate, but I figured God would find His place in my ideals eventually, so I wasn’t worried. I wasn’t worried until I finally took a step back and critically examined my religious beliefs; then I was terrified.

See, instead of seeing what I was hoping to see – the good Christian boy I grew up knowing – I identified my questions and qualms with the church. I was not comfortable saying what I did and did not believe; instead, I only saw what I did not believe. And that was shocking.

Doubts are inherent in everything I conceive, but I did not leave room for the magnitude of doubts I was dealing with in my religious views. And that was crippling, and I felt like my world had fallen apart around me. If these thoughts aren’t solidified, then what can I have an unbreakable belief in if not in religion? And that made its way to my head and intruded on everything I did.

It took me a while, and some deal of outside help, to realize that I didn’t need to have the solution to my doubts. In fact, I didn’t even have to be able to conceive of a way to even ever dispel my beliefs.

It is the question that drives me, not the uncertainty that kills me.

Life's Questions

I haven't posted in a while because I felt like I was dealing with issues that I didn’t have answers to, and as a result I didn’t have anything to share. If I didn’t have solutions, then why would I post?

I now realize that this isn’t about the answers. Life is about the questions and how we relate to things that we don’t know what to think about. I’ve realized that I have more questions that I could possibly find answers to, and to hold up my life every time a big question came around that sent my thoughts into a tailspin would be completely absurd. As much as I would love to know the solutions to everything I may ever encounter, I now understand that such a request is lucrative. Hence, I acknowledge my passion for questions.

I love questions. I like answers, but I love good, insightful, stride-stopping questions that intercede in the progression of life.

Now, I just have to be comfortable with the knowledge that I am ignorant to matters of such enormity as religion and ethics. Whereas I’d love to step in and say that I’ve got it all figured out, I clearly don’t, and the humor of my persistent belief in my abilities still catches me.

I want to know the truth about the presence of God, but as I recently identified, the place for me to start is to settle for knowing that which I believe, and that which I can take by faith. Once I know where I stand, I can proceed with grappling and contemplating where my beliefs will take me.

So, at least for now, my life is about questions. Not answers, and I don’t need to hear any so-called “truths”, but I live with the questions, and let wonder fill my mind as I consider this world we inhabit.

And as one last thought for you to put in your blender and take for a spin: What holds value, and why?

I want to be my own HERO

According to Michael, the idea of heroism is pushing the limits, challenging the frontier of the unknown, and doing it because you can. It is not being satisfied with what you are given because that is what you have, but being satisfied knowing that you have done your best and have achieved what you have obtained. I want to disturb the everyday status quo and make what I choose out of life. Not to take circumstances for granted, but I want to enact my beliefs and live the life I define, not that which has been give to me.

I love the idea of showing other people what they can do and challenging them to push past their contented static lifestyle, but I want to do that for myself before I begin to help others. I want to challenge the ordinary and question the norm because I can imagine making a difference.

But what does this entail for me? What does this mean I should do right now? That is half of the problem. I need to both acknowledge a domain for change and act on that conviction. So where do I go from here? I am already on my way, having begun these writings and brought my convictions to consciousness, but that's not all. I want to take the small opportunities I have and devote myself to the goal, rather than succumb to apathy.

So I will finish math problems, study more than enough for tests, share my ideas in class, and offer my help beyond the classroom. I want to set goals to start new projects in my writings, manage my free time and make it productive.

I want to feel as if I grasped each day and lived it to its fullest potential. Bring on life. That is heroic.

I Feel, Therefore I AM

I was riding the bus back to school when this idea popped into my head. I don't exactly know where it came from, but I do know that I was experiencing a realm of emotions at the time; and I was loving it. I realize that all too often we believe that what makes us different, what makes humans unique, is our capacity for knowledge. I would ague that isn't all that unique. I mean, if you think about it, if everyone used logic perfectly and never let emotions invade their thinking, everyone would always come up with just about the same answer as everyone else. The only variance would be in what information went into making the logic flow. Rationality is just a process, and if used properly, it has nothing unique, nothing that can differentiate between people; and that is why it is so often considered to be so great. It is designed to allow multiple people to come up with the same answer. Computers can do that.

But emotions are unique. They are different to everyone. Not only does the same situation evoke different emotions in different people, but even the same emotion can evoke different responses within different individuals. And I LOVE that. It is the presence of emotions, passions, and spirits that drive people and make the world what it is we see today. 

If there were nothing to be had but logic, then life would be nothing but a string of events that inherently dictate the succeeding step in every case. To every input there is an output. It would make machines of us, because we would have no drives but those of logic. And even in a world where science conquers over disbelief, I would hate to live there. I would hate to follow the strategically structured routine and have no drive but that of rational advancement, but I wouldn’t know any better. There would be no art, because there have to be more efficient ways of making people happy or of expressing oneself, and there never would be any emotions to express through the nonexistent medium. Even happiness could be thrown out the window if it wasn't necessary to promote a fluid work-flow.

That is a terrifying thought. I would rather be unhappy at times than never to be able to feel energetic, to feel passionate. I want to be hurt so I can feel alive, because what is life if it isn't being alive? And what can constitute a desire if there is no basis for comparison that makes one alternative better than another? Sadness makes joy all that more powerful. And loneliness makes company all the more enjoyable. I don't advocate that one should seek less-than-desirable emotions, but rather when they inevitably come around, that we embrace them with the knowledge that they make joy possible. They show us that we are alive, and aren't just stimulated brains in jars. 

I want to let my passions grab a hold of me. And while I won't let them stray me in wrong direction, I will embrace the feeling of spirit and of vivacity while I have it to enjoy. This doesn’t get thought of enough in the right context: you only life once.