Sentient Meat

Sentient Meat
I always like arriving late to the party, but for once, I was actually ahead of the pop culture curve and finished True Detective with everyone else when it ended its run a couple of months ago on HBO. One of the best shows that I have had the pleasure of getting swept up in, and the best part, for me, was the philosophical dialogues given by Rust Cohle.
Almost all of his philosophical points resonated with me (from his Nietzschean aspects on eternal recurrence, to his quip to Marty about the average IQ of the people attending the revival tent, to the excellent line, “we are just sentient meat”) save the last one, the one where he and Marty are out of the hospital in the last scene of the last episode and as Rust is lighting up he is recanting his earlier held beliefs. That part rang false for me if for no other reason than it smacked of another intellectual show cashing out for a “feel good” Hollywood ending that would not leave people with a pessimistic sour feeling.
I think that anyone, when faced with their own mortality, tends to do a certain sort of “bad faith” renegotiation of their belief structure, that is, if you don’t believe in some religion (I honestly do not know what people who believe do when faced with a near death experience, perhaps it just reaffirms their belief structure and it all falls under, “God wasn’t ready to bring me home yet”). I think, for agnostics and atheists, this portrayal of a near death reevaluation of one’s belief structure (especially when one is talking about this character who was so sure, so ready for death’s sweet release) is a cop out. Personally, I don’t seek any benefit when I die save for an end of this existence and a return to the void where my time is over and I decompose back into the universe.
This very thought, faced with an abyss of nothingness, used to scare me, it provoked high levels of anxiety and doubt and concern over my human condition and my desire for some form of sentient immortality. During these anxious moments I wholeheartedly embraced Platonic theory (the closest to any form of religion I could allow myself to follow) for comfort. Then at some point I just let it go. I realized that a majority of human experience is filled with suffering, regret, anger, and despair. Yes, there are some highlights that help break this cycle, but for the most part, this curse of being sentient meat is filled with strife.
By embracing that life is hard one cannot be let down by unrealistic expectations, such expectations offered under the false hope of religion. Religion, like everything else, is corrupted by the human desire to deny what we are, to deny that we are simple animals who are cursed with the ability to know what we are, and then we spend all of our years denying a simple truth with the sweet deceptive lie of “life after death.” That is just too much to handle for me, I embrace my nature as a temporary human consciousness in the vast cosmos that gets a brief time to enjoy contemplation and try to leave some sort of legacy to my child. When one accepts this, accepts the strife, strives to do some sort of “good” and then passes out of what we term existence it becomes much less a pessimistic outlook and one of the greatest forms of life affirming optimism that one can hold close.
Anything else would be hypocritical bullshit.

Keeping my Eye on What's Important

It is very quaint to me that I still get upset over small, trivial things.  Alright, quaint is not the right word, it is annoying that I still get upset over small, petty things that in the grand scheme don't matter.  In the end I know that I am just food for worms, just a sack of meat that has been cursed with sentience.  That last sentence makes it sound as if I don't wish to be sentient, that is not true, what I wish is that I could keep my eye on the prize, which is to raise a daughter that feels connected to her community, that feels that there is more to just a buck for labor exchange.

What is hard is that I myself, while wanting to feel connected to my community, feel the most disconnected when I make errors in judgment (such as when I push off paying bills for an iPad, or some such electronic device that is mined by struggling laborers in the developing world).  This does little to help my community, in fact, I feel that rampant, runaway mass consumerism in America is what is destroying communities (but that is a topic to address later).

When I ran the Portland Marathon in January what I saw amazed me and made me feel proud not only to be a Portlander, but to be a part of something that was and was not about me.  It was about the community gathering together to cheer on and support runners.  I was winded on the last eight miles, I was hobbling because my training always peaked at 14.3 miles, never more, so I was unprepared for my feet to be in so much pain, while I was limp run/walking many fellow runners and spectators not only cheered me on, but asked if I was alright.  Community, that was the one thing that I took away from that marathon (other than train harder and better).

One does not need to run endurance sports to feel connected, my example worked for me, but the easiest way to get involved is to take an interest, help people, smile, make eye contact.  It is so easy in today's fast paced big meal world to just ignore, look the other way, ramp up the volume on your iPod and plug out from those around you.  In fact, for me, sometimes I want to, I want to ignore the populace on my commute (MAX to bus route 15), but I also like to bask in the debate I witnessed over the summer on Trimet's bus line 15 over the fluoride vote, it was truly  inspiring.

What I am getting at is that I was in a bit of a funk after my work review, I kept wanting to spew Marx's labor analysis at my employer (actual labor versus compensated labor, etc.) but in reality, I make enough money to fit my current needs, and if I want to make more, well, for my experience in what I do, my training, and my resume, I know where the door is.  But it is not about that, advocating for oneself is one thing, but just finding ways to be unhappy is quite another.

All that makes me happy is treating people with the same respect that I would want if I were in their shoes.  That's always been a big problem for me as I tend to be a very self-centered asshole of a human being (an no, despite what some people want to claim, having a child is not a cure-all solution to this type of personality disorder), but I want to stop doing that, if for no other reason than that for 31 years it has cost me far more than it has ever rewarded me.

Ghandi said "If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. … We need not wait to see what others do.”  There is no larger burden than those willing to be like the Philosopher in Plato's allegory of the cave, not everyone will want to listen, most will laugh, but it's the not trying that fills you with regret when you go to sleep at night, and remember, there is no guarantee that you will wake up in the morning.