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Ridicule & Mockery FTW?
Hey everyone, Xandar’s Meteor here. I just wanted to weigh in on a topic that is running rampant through the YouTube atheist community right now. Everyone has their opinion, everyone has their own way of dealing with that in which they do not believe. Knowing this and recognizing this is paramount to understanding the conflict between atheists and theists. Only one side claims absolute knowledge while the other is open to the possibility that future discoveries and evidence will not only allow, but necessitate, changing one’s mind about certain topics and and adjusting one’s opinion and stance in regards to subjects such as morality, human value, and the responsibilities humankind must accept while here on this planet.
Being on any one side of a conflict or debate brings with it the responsibility to not only educate youself on the topic at hand, but also to understand the arguments from the opposing side. Using the Socratic method of inquiry, each side has the opportunity to debunk or discredit the other side by civil discourse or logic. This method allows civility and respect to be given to the participants without resorting to ad hominem attacks while ensuring any red herring arguments to be fileted as the conversation continues. While this process is both healthy and helpful to discussing nearly any topic, when it comes to religion, it almost always falls apart as the religious, when pressed upon to answer even the most mundane and straightforward question, such as, “Why did your god command the murder, genocide, and rape as told by the stories in your holy book?” with non-answers such as “god moves in mysterious ways” or Billy Boy Craig’s assertion that bad things that happen may have a greater divine role and thus we should not question the actions of his god.
It is at this point in any debate, the point at which you realize you are no longer debating a topic about which both parties are open and willing to change their ideas or at least reevaluate and reconsider the other side’s arguments, that the debate is over. Anything beyond this point in a discussion is simply window-dressing for the listeners and non-active participants.
So, what’s the the point?
Recently, TogetherForPeace attempted to accuse the atheists on YouTube of hypocrisy by comparing the atheists’ arguments against racism (which I might add was an argument between mostly atheists on both sides of the issue and not atheists vs theists) to the mockery of theists by atheists. Jack’s claim is that atheists shouldn’t be mocking theists because some atheists are against racism.
……………..Yup, that’s it, that’s the summary.
What Jack and many other theists believe is that when they enter into a debate, or a discussion, or simply trying to justify their beliefs, whatever those beliefs may be, they are free from all the other tactics that might be used in an argument. They enter the debate with the assumption that they are right, their proof is self-evident, and anyone that disagrees is not only wrong, but an enemy, and then they whine and cry when their obvious unwillingness to listen to logic or examine the evidence presented by the other side is pointed out. Not all arguments are attacks and not all attacks are mockery, but it’s not the beliefs that are being attacked or argued against more often than not. It’s the willful ignorance and closed-mindedness of the participants of the debate that denegrates a civil discussion of inquiry into the “us vs them” polarizing and the ad hominem attacks and mockery.
For example: One of the worst arguments against the validity of science is to say that science changes all the time, but that god is constant and never-changing. Firstly, any system that is set up and sold as “perfect” or “flawless” is inherently flawed due the fact that both time and thought will eventually envision a more-perfect or even more-flawless idea or concept. When that happens, holding on to the belief that what once was considered perfect is still perfect even though it’s characteristics and standing have been improved upon and, for lack of a better concept, made perfectly, is not only to deny the reality of the universe in which we live, but to be willfully ignorant.
Science improves on a daily basis due to hard work, dedication, and a desire to improve the world in which we live. Those improvements are the changes that those against science and scientific understanding use in their arguments to attempt to discredit the validity of any argument against their beliefs. But what they are ignoring so many times, is that their own beliefs have been changing since the moment they first began to believe. Belief in the supernatural requires one to take into account the fact that there are things that are not understood and things that can not be explained in any way other than to adjust their view of what is real and corporeal and handing those perceived miracles over to the unknown. When those experiences are placed outside of the known and given their sacred position, the emotional attachment to the questions a theist is unwilling to scrutinize causes the believer to react negatively to any outside source that may attempt to prove or disprove a claim. Ignoring the evidence stacked against their beliefs, a theist is forced to adjust their belief system and their definition of reality to allow for their supernatural explanation in an otherwise natural existence.
This is when many atheists turn to ridicule and mockery and while I don’t always agree with this tactic, many times it’s completely justified. You see, while many theists will use technology brought about by the science they so often rage against, they will then turn around and say that while technology and modern medicine have brought us further along as a species, it hasn’t brought us meaning, or happiness, or a purpose, and that is why their religious beliefs have merit and should be adopted by all other humans. Very rarely should you believe a theist that claims to be okay with your non-belief in their god. They may be respectful to your beliefs, but more often than not, they are simply hoping that by maintaining a civil conversation with you, they are able to plant the seeds of their belief into your head in hopes that there will someday be a time where you will believe as they do. At this point in my journey, I believe the same applies to a non-believer as well. Why else do we have these discussions and debates and conversations but to hopefully influence others and perhaps convince them that they are incorrect in their beliefs or non-belief.
Mocking someone’s unwillingness to accept that an apple is an apple, that the Earth moves around the Sun, and that the stars aren’t pinholes in the canvas of night is analagous to the mockery of theists by atheists…and vice versa. While there is always the hope that any debatable topic can be rational, logical, and free from emotion, religion is not one of those topics. Keeping this in mind when talking to or arguing with a theist is necessary up to the point where either side has shown a complete disrespect for the others’ positions and arguments and has decided that there is no evidence or logical explanation or appeal to emotion (which is where 9 out of 10 theists will go when all else has been stripped away from their arguments) that will convince them that they are simply holding on to a view that has been discredited and proven to be false. At this point, and this point only, should anyone begin to mock or ridicule another’s beliefs.
All this to say what exactly?
Well, I believe that mockery is a useful weapon in the arsenal of logical thought and open-minded debate in the discussions concerning the nature of our universe, but it shouldn’t be the first choice. It should be a last resort to use against those that have proven time and again that they are unwilling to listen to the other side of any argument in which they claim to hold the perfect and flawless position. Throwing tomatoes and beer bottles was never how a bad concert or movie started, it was only after realizing that it wasn’t getting any better that the audience revolted.
I have a rambling video over on SpotlightOnXandar that sort of touches on this same topic and I encourage anyone that is actively debating with or planning on debating a theist to check it out just so you can go into the conversation with more information and maybe a better understanding of the theist mindset. Knowledge is power and open inquiry into established beliefs and ideas is how we moved from the caves and the deserts and established our society with the further goal of creating a better world and more enriched and diverse species. When ignorance is a lack of knowledge, it can be remedied by education and patient delivery of evidence, but when one has decided to be willfully ignorant and eschews all claims and evidence to the contrary, ridicule and mockery should be expected. If anyone can’t deal with being pointed at and laughed at, they should strive to either educate themselves on the topics, or do what I do when I don’t understand what someone is talking about, sit down, shut the fuck up, listen, and learn.
Have a good one, everybody.
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My (Roaring) 20s - Pt 3.1
How can I recognize what is “good” and what is “evil?”
I have an internal, built-in system that tells me what is “good and evil.” I know that a whole lot of it has to do with on’s upbringing: What they were taught as a child and what one’s parents’ parents taught them. Many truths about “good and evil, right and wrong” came along with and are covered in the Bible. If nothing else the Bible at least teaches us good morals and a value system that will tell us whether one thing is “bad or evil.” Is it all relative, though? Is one thing that is bad for one person necessarily bad for another? Not in all cases, but in many. If you ever base your perceptions of “good and evil” on any one thing, like the Bible, you have to stick to it and your values can not waiver from that stand. And you can’t ever justify your actions by saying you will only do it once. Once you have set in your mind what is “good” and what is “evil,” you can’t let go, it’s there, get used to it.
Good, evil, right, wrong: these were the words that were described and defined in my life as immutable pillars of a christian life. We all knew of the rules and laws dictated to us through the bible, and although many times they were rather straightforward, such as thou shalt not kill, many other times, the morals and guidelines we were taught had to be extracted from either the context of the bible, or the preachings of a pastor with an agenda.
For years, the guilt from masturbation was almost enough to make me stop…but not quite enough when compared to the quickly fading pleasure it provided me. More times than not, the clean-up period was followed by a prayer for forgiveness for the act and strength to overcome my carnal desires and not be tempted to do it again, no matter what my hormones were doing to my body. When I was in high school, the internet wasn’t nearly as pervasive and although my dad brought computers home from work so I could tinker and learn and play hours and hours of SimFarm, I didn’t hook into the internet until around 1996. One of the things I looked up shortly after listening to the modem handshake was “Is masturbation wrong?” I went to the christian sources (as few as there were then) and found the verse about Onan and that he spilled his seed on the ground instead of into his brother’s wife. This was used as concrete evidence to espouse their anti-masturbation ideas. I of course, just started feeling more and more guilty when I took the time to take Rosy Palms out for a date. I mean, if God killed a man because he masturbated once, what would MY punishment be considering the number of times I asked mom for another box of tissues for my room?
Later, I revisited the story of Onan and read more commetary on the issue and found that not only was the verse misinterpreted by those I had referenced before, but also a part of a larger idea that starts at birth. Infants and very young children touch their genetalia very early on in their existence and that behavior, more often than not, is discouraged, and in many times punished. We are taught from infanthood that our bodies are disgusting, our bodies aren’t to be explored, and pleasure is to be denied due to archaic social morals and religious indoctrination. Only very rarely in my lifetime have I heard a believer say that masturbation was not a sin, was not “wrong,” and was not something we should be ashamed of and feel guilty because of. Those very few instances where a believer can see through the bullshit and take the story of Onan for what it actually was, a transgression against levirite law concerning creating male offspring for a dead brother, gave me hope that the actions I took when alone were not paving the way to Hell and not another reason why I should view myself as unworthy and sinful and damned.
The naive 17 year old that hadn’t lived life long enough to learn that his upbringing would be detrimental to the next 17 years almost, thought that not only were morals taught in the bible true and to be followed,but he also believed that they were unchanging and that once you decided that something was “wrong” or a “sin” it would always be and there was no changing that fact.
The fundamentalist christian environment is one of moral absolutes, never-changing rules, and sets the stage to many other teen and adult maladies and disorders, in my opinion, due to the ever-raging battle of what you feel is your heart versus your mind and body. We were taught that we were spirit beings living inside of a body and given a mind that we used only here on earth and that later, we would be freed from the mind and the body and become simply spirits again. I realize that according to the doctrine, later we are reuinited, in a way, with our bodies as they are made perfect again, but as I’ve said before, “What does that mean to us here and now?” Even as I sit here reading through online articles and commentary concerning religion’s take on depression, I see that what I was taught is still being espoused: that there are demons in this world and when we let down our guard we allow them into our lives where they can manifest as negative emotions and mental obstacles. A specific article I read said the following: quote “I’m not denying that depression can be spiritually induced. Guilt…a sense of having failed to live out the will of god…[and] fear of death” unquote can lead to a person becoming depressed and eventually suicidal. The author then goes on to suggest reading the bible to get over these feelings and later goes even further to suggest that perhaps the church and christianity itself can be a cause of depression. No shit, Sherlock.
When we have been locked into a set of morals and our moral compass is skewed to always point to the bible, we find ourselves in the midst of very tumultuous waters that can toss us from side to side as we fight against what we think we know to be true and what we actually see when we stop long enough to evaluate our thoughts on any given subject. As with all things, morals are not certain, they are not objective and even if they were, it’s not as though christians or muslims or jews follow them all the time anyway. The indoctrination that breaks us down and whittles away our self worth by way of sunday sermon after sunday sermon telling us that we are flawed and that the only way to not be such a worthless piece of shit human is to believe in and accept their version of god and their holy books is about as harmful to the positive and healthy development of the human mind and can cause great distress both within and without. My actions in part 3 point zero are a display of what can happen when one is torn between what a believer would call the “desires of the flesh” and “the will of god.”
GreatBigBore left a few comments on my last video that I have been trying to not only decipher but also to apply to my mind and my life. In those comments, he mentioned that what I did wasn’t “wrong” and that the actions I took were a result of hormones and indoctrination. Part of me wants to tell him that HE is wrong and that my actions were harmful to another human being and should be admonished. But another part of me sees exactly what he is saying and while I still can take responsibility for my actions and attempt to repair the damage that has been done, I need to take on his other advice and stop judging myself. Being “wrong” and being “uninformed” are terribly different beasts and moving away from that mindset is something I’ll be working on for a long time, but I have hope that I’ll eventually not have to work so hard at it and won’t have to stop before making every decision to be sure I’m not getting back into the “should-based morality” that GreatBigBore mentions.
What is good and what is evil to me can be summed up thusly: If one’s actions harm another or cause destruction, then it is bad and/or evil. Beyond that, all else isn’t necessarily “good” but if it is not harmful and does not cause harm or destruction, what can be bad about it and why would it make one evil? Nitpicking my own definition, I already have some issues with believing that this is a thourough definition of good vs evil, but thus far, I’ve not found an example in my own head that doesn’t fit and I’m reminded that it wasn’t my relationship with a god or my biblical knowledge that led me to this conclusion but it was the understanding that compassion and empathy are worthwhile emotions and when one quote “loves the sinner but not the sin” unquote they are judging us all and further dividing humankind into subsets and creating an “us vs them” situation.
I realize that we can not and do not stop and examine every decision we make and while I look back and see some very poor decisions in my past, I’m reminded of what many people have said to me over the years: Sometimes, the decisions we make are the best decisions we can make at that point in our lives. To look back through the clarity of time and wisdom and judge those decisions is to forget that we were not always where we are and it was only through decision after decision and hopefully learning through those decisions that we can sit on our high horses and deem our past selves flawed or mistaken. As I take this journey and I ponder on what I thought was right and what I thought was wrong and how I thought that I was caught in a battle between the forces of good and the forces of evil and that in the end good will prevail, I’m reminded that this isn’t the first time I got up on this high horse but I’m hoping to embrace my past as a lesson and maybe that way, I can get rid of this damn horse.
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9 Questions - “My (Roaring) 20s” - Pt 3.0
One does not know what one has until he has lost it and never have those words been more true in my life than they were in the fall of 2001. I had fallen away from going to Poetry Night as I found much of the drama that went on with the participants and my ever-shrinking circle of friends had become the focus of the gathering, and while I still wanted to write and perform, I discovered that the drive to be creative was replaced by a drive to be wanted, to be “famous,” and to be loved. I had a couple of quick flings while spending my time at the coffee house, but nothing came of them and I know now that I was just trying to find something to get me through another day or another week if possible. I was still in contact with my ex as she had moved across town and then found a job back on my side of town, and as horrible as I was to her, she forgave me for how I made her feel, what I said, and what I did to her. Our relationship had gone from friendship to hatred and back to tentative friendship. She pursued her own life and I did the same in mine. Although I missed having her around and I missed having her to talk to and listen and help me through my frustration at being alive, I was glad that we were separated so we could rediscover the care and concern we had for each other. I was still working 2 jobs, so my availability to fill the role of a shoulder to cry on for her or for her to be my shoulder upon which to cry was limited and over a couple of months, I started to see her pulling away and suspected she may be seeing someone and just didn’t want to tell me. I’d like to take a quick moment here and explain something about my story. I am not proud of the actions of my past and while it may appear I am telling my story to brag about how bad-ass or supercool I am, I’m actually telling my story to show how fucked up I was and that I know that now. While in the moment, our emotions can get the better of us almost every time and when you don’t know what positive application of your emotions looks like or how to harness the negative emotions at least enough to keep you from acting without thinking, you can do amazingly stupid and harmful things. You may have noticed that I am not justifying my actions and I’ve even said in this series that I can only blame my upbringing so far before I have to admit and accept that I chose to continue along the harmful path upon which I had been placed. Back to the story… Since my ex worked so close to where I lived, literally only blocks away, I started showing up in her parking lot to see what she did when she got off of work. I wasn’t always able to do this, but when I could, I saw that she was spending a fair amount of time after work talking to a certain other guy. Yes, I stalked her, eventually following her back to her apartment and sitting for hours in a dark car waiting for the evidence that I needed to prove my suspicion that she was going ahead and living her life without consulting me. I don’t remember exactly how long I dropped into the dark side before confronting her, but I’d say I spent a couple of weeks exhibiting this behavior and trying to justify it in my head as her lying to me as a friend. I wasn’t willing or able to admit that the reason I was doing this was jealousy. Extreme and harmful jealousy. She was moving on with her life and I was stuck with no one and nothing to move on to. How dare she not check in with me to be sure I was ready for her to live without me. I had learned of distrust and mistrust before meeting her, but jealousy was brand new to me. Watching the patterns repeat, I see that the reason I became jealous more than anything was that I had turned my life into the relationship she and I had. I had pulled the whole “guy meets girl, guy dumps friends, guy dumbs girl, guy has no friends left” trick. In my loneliness and my self-loathing, I found one small flame still burning and I was suddenly enamored with her and found that even through all the hatred, all the yelling, all the arguments, and all the disrespect, I “loved” her and wanted to be with her again and forever. I started with hints and when the hints didn’t work, I went all for it and told her that I wanted her back and wanted to get married. Her initial reaction was no. She admitted that there was another guy that she liked and she wanted to see what would happen with that situation before she would even entertain thoughts of her and me again. I dropped into yet another round of severe depression, but strangely, no suicidal thoughts this time. In fact, it would be nearly 10 years before I thought of suicide as a viable option again. Thanksgiving, 2001. My parents were away from their condo in Washington, D.C., and I asked them if I could borrow it for a few days. Still being held in limbo by my ex-girlfriend’s insistence to seek options other than a life with me, I drove to D.C. and spent 2 days sitting in a small restaurant writing in my journal and praying about what I should do in regards to this situation. Partway through the second day, I felt a peace come over me. I have since lost that journal, but I remember two thirds of the way down the right hand page were the words “Let go and Love.” Until recently, I thought that those 4 words came from God and that he was finally helping me figure out what I should do and how to move forward in regards to a relationship with her. As with all things from imaginary friends, the words I thought that I had received had to be intepreted. I look at those words now and realize that the key is letting go, not the love. But of course, I simply used it as justification to drive back to Oklahoma and push myself back into her life as much as I could. I started listening to her music, watching movies she liked, and all the while claiming that I had changed, I was different, and that she was the most important thing in my life now and would be forever. Although I don’t know all the details, she eventually called it quits with this other guy and we were back together. In January, after my brother-in-law and sister helped me pay for a ring, I took her out to a nice dinner and then to a walk through Woodward Park, my mind filling with memories of Mary from 5 years prior, and got on my knee and asked my girlfriend to marry me. She said yes, I wiped the tears from my eyes and we took off to plan the wedding and the life before us. Familiarity breeds contempt, they say, and after moving in with her and living with her for the first half of 2002, I came to realize that I wasn’t with her for any of the right reasons and I started questioning myself and my intentions and looking back at the year before when I had dropped so low as to stalk her and wondering just what the hell was wrong with me. The dynamic between her and I after our engagement wasn’t what it was before and I don’t know why I thought it would be the same after all we had been through with each other and all the damage I had done to her and myself, but I found myself spending very little time with her and we started to talk about it. When I was trying to get her back, I told her that I was fine with her desire to move back to Ohio and live out our lives there. I thought I would be able to make that sacrifice if it meant I would be with her. As the reality of what I agreed to do to get her to say yes to me sunk in, I came to the harsh realization that I had compromised my dreams and my desires and had betrayed myself and lied to her. I had allowed jealousy and anger at my past actions to get the better of me and had determined to tell her anything she wanted to hear and nothing she didn’t want to hear. Both fortunately and unfortunately, I finally couldn’t lie anymore and I told her that I still wanted to be with her and get married, but I couldn’t move back to Ohio because there was no life for me there, no future for me. It took a few days of conversation for the cold hard reality of what I was saying to sink in for both of us, but I remember the night we were lying in bed, both of us crying, both of us apologizing, and both of us watching as a future we had built up in our minds over the last few years generally and last 6 months specifically crumble to pieces, catch flame, and burn away. She handed me the ring back, told me that she loved me, and asked to be left alone. I went to the couch in the living room and cried over my lost future and my lost love. Over the next month or so, we found new apartments and other than one night in early 2003, we never shared much of our lives with each other again and she eventually moved back to Ohio to be close to family and now has a family of her own. I was on the verge of having another anger meltdown after all of this occurred and in my frustration and need of change, I quit both of my jobs and took a new one so that I wouldn’t have to be forced to see and experience the same memories I had with her in the places we made them. Shortly after breaking of the engagement, I started writing in my journals regularly. I don’t talk about this girl in my journal for over a year after starting to write again. It still hurt to know that I had what I wanted and since I lied to get it, it was worthless to me. Love is sacrifice and either I wasn’t in love as much as I thought, or I was still under the impression that she would do anything for me, including abandoning her family in Ohio and her quiet, idyllic life. Perhaps both. Looking back from here, I see that the actions that I took, while some were deplorable, were beneficial to my future. As I move forward in time through my story, I’m finding that while I may have been a stubborn learner, I did learn. Some mistakes were repeated, some of those many times, but as I revisit these mistakes, I am finding that the motivations behind the decisions were the problem more often than not, and that decisions I made in haste were very often, if not always, corrected by level-headed thinking and analysis at a later time. Sure, I was young, frivolous, inept, and maybe a little broken, but I was simply testing this thing we call life. Trying on different hats, different wardrobes even, in an attempt to find what would make me happy as I moved forward in life. It is all a part of just being alive and I thought I knew what I wanted out of that experience. On some days, I still believe that I do know what I want out of life, but I’ve buried it under a lot of dirt and lot of disappointments and of misguided motivations. When my mind can take something so freeing as “Let go and love” and turn it into forcing your will onto another person, there is clearly damage and without my recognition of my flawed motivations and actions, I would have gone through with marrying my fiance and perhaps life would have been okay, would have been tolerable, but I don’t think that it would have ever been enjoyable or fulfilling. I was finally starting to grow up and look out for my own self-interests without extreme selfishness taking over, but I still had a long way to go.
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9 Questions - My (Roaring) 20s - Part Two
Please be sure to watch the video to it’s end as there is a special note at the end of part 2.
So there I was, back in Oklahoma, living only a mile away from Oral Roberts University with my on-again-off-again girlfriend. I didn’t feel as though I had come full circle even though driving by some of the landmarks in Tulsa, interspersed between the thousands of churches, reminded me of what I left behind when I dropped out of college 4 years prior. Mary was still in Tulsa and while we did meet once to talk about where we were in our lives, we both saw that we were on two different journeys and while what we had was beautiful and perhaps even perfect, the intervening years and the experiences of those years in our lives had created two terribly different people. I remember meeting up with her and wondering if there would still be any sign of a spark between us. After a couple of hours, I had to resign myself to the fact that she was as lost to me as I was lost in this world. I was forced to move on with my life knowing she would never be a part of it.
When mourning one’s past, it’s easy to think that you still have a chance to right the wrongs of yesterday and if you allow yourself this selfish philosophy, you can spend all of your time missing the gems that are at your feet and in your hands by looking up at the stars and thinking that if you just concentrate and wish hard enough, they will become yours.
After a time, my relationship with the girl I moved to Tulsa with degenerated into a constant battle of wills with me becoming a verbally abusive, emotionally damning, heartless monster that sought nothing less than the complete obliteration of the confidence, intelligence, and empathy I once held dear and true. I vividly remember many arguments that ended with me screaming at her about how worthless she was, about how she would never amount to anything, about how no one could ever love her for who she is, and how I wasn’t going to spend any more time or energy on her. Reducing her to tears and ripping away any care she might have still had for me, I gloated over her in a sense of superiority, a sense of victory. I believed that the emotions I was displaying were finally the real me. That the considerate, caring, empathetic, kind, and loving person I had been was all a sham, all an attempt to put on a mask for the world so that I could get what I wanted or at least not cause any waves. My anger at everything twisted my mind so greatly that I honestly believed that brutal, cruel, and uncaring honesty of opinion was the only true way to express one’s self. I had gone from being a charasmatic and charming young man to being an asshole. And then after seeing that being an asshole can actually get you want you want out of people sometimes, I went all out and became a complete dick.
I mocked people’s ideas, mocked their problems as petty or inconsequential, and basically my friends knew that while I could be fun if I was drinking, I was probably going to eventually say something that was harsh and couldn’t be taken any other way than me just being a dick. Although the cliche of girls liking bad boys is mostly true, there’s a limit…and as I pushed this girl further and further away from me, leeched out all compassion towards me and hope she had for us, spent every day reducing her comfidence and her will power, and my friends reinforced my delusional state by shunning me, I finally realized I had gone over that limit and found myself spending long nights alone and lonely, angry at myself again for thinking I had it right and that they were the ones that were jealous of my intellect, envious of my fuck-off manner, and lustful over my ability to seemingly not give a damn about anything.
And so it was, one year after moving to Tulsa, I was living alone, working 2 jobs, had no social life, no friends, no life. I had secretly signed a new lease on the apartment I moved into with the girl that moved to Tulsa with me, but this time it didn’t have her name on it. I remember typing up my own eviction notice to give to her and giving her one month to get out of the apartment. She took it rather well, I remember, but I think that maybe there was very little positive emotion left in her at that point in regards to her and me. I had shown her so much hate I was amazed every morning while she was still in that apartment that she was still in that apartment. I think she held on as long as she could and I finally decided for her that it was time to leave.
There comes a time in many relationships where we know that we are done. Most of the time we stick around a bit longer after that realization, sometimes we stick around for a long time, and sometimes we think so lowly of ourselves and our dreams and hopes, that we stay in them for the rest of our lives. Lying in bed at night, we listen to breathing beside us and it’s alien to us. Our thoughts that used to center around that person lying next to us strive to find something new to live for, search for some reason why we stay, hope that something happens that will rip the final threads of the relationship so we we can go back out and try again with hopefully better results.
I was working 70+ hours a week between the two jobs after she moved out and while I like to think that it was because I had a strong work ethic or that I was planning on putting the money earned towards repairing my credit or paying off debts, neither of these really hit the core of why I spent all of my time outside of my apartment. The truth of the matter is that I was miserable and angry and every minute I spent in my apartment was another minute I had to deal with being alone again, with having had so much love given to me by another person and not appreciating it, not accepting it, not putting aside my hatred for living long enough to realize life isn’t supposed to be lived by burning every bridge, every field, every person.
In the summer of 2001, at the prodding of some of my coworkers, I started attending a local Poetry Night at a coffee shop downtown. I attended 3 or 4 nights without joining in, but after spending so many nights in the bars or one of the many 24 hour diners in town with some of the participants in Poetry Night, I finally sat down, and started writing again. It started with rants, performances pieces that were tailored to appeal to the nonconformist crowd I was starting to identify with. I never fit the bill of nonconformist as I dressed decently within normal fashion of the time period, I didn’t think the system was out to get me so much so that I couldn’t overcome it with hard work and dedication, and I actually had a job…two jobs, so unlike the unwashed masses of Poetry Night, I generally brought my own smokes and bought my own drinks.
After many months of performing every Wednesday night, my new version of church, I started to get disillusioned by the angry rants and ravings I saw being presented after September 11, 2001. Up until then, I had been a staunch republican and thought Clinton was a bad president, Bush Jr was this country’s saviour, and that abortion was wrong even though I had been instrumental in one being performed, sodomy was wrong although my sexual experiences with the female persuasion had included the dictionary definition of sodomy, homosexuality was wrong because it quote wasn’t natural end quote, socialism was godless communism, and basically everything else you could think of that the republican party has stood for over the years.
Interestingly enough, it was reading about conspiracy theories in regards to the World Trade Center and the events of September 11, 2001, that caused me to question my stance on politics and I found myself defending my country with hollow words and bullet points I’d read on news websites. I didn’t really feel it anymore and that’s when I realized that my anger tank was getting empty. I started to understand that people were important, that people were what made our society great, and that the pains and sufferings of others should be a priority. Somewhere inside me, I was starting to regain some of the empathy I thought I had lost forever.
Regaining that empathy took me somewhere even I had no clue about and the course I chose in the fall of 2001 was a sure fire way to refill my tank of angry.
What is the purpose of human and my existence?
I am here for a reason only God knows. I can’t know everything. I can only ask God to reveal what He wants me to know. Why am I here? I know that the Bible says that I am here to spread the Word of God, but what about the unsaved? Are they just here to give us something to do? I don’t know. Life is a mystery: We are born to die and we die to be freed from this world and its pains. What is the point of it all? There has to be a point. Is life just the trial that we have to go through to get to the final reward on the other side? No, that doesn’t make sense, but then again, nothing ever does. You can’t make sense in such a messed up universe. Today’s adults and leaders tell us contantly that we will amount to nothing. Generation X they say. I resent that. We are over-achievers. But to what purpose, what final goal is there? Death? No there has to be more to life than that. I know there is something after death, but while we are here and alive what does that matter? I don’t know what the answer to human existence is and I don’t think we will know while we, in our human form, are still alive. It’s a question only capable of being answered by someone higher up.
17 years old and just as questioning in my purpose here on earth, I see that I was still hopeful and optimistic about my future even if the anger was already peaking around the corner. Over the past 16 years, I’ve used the point that I stated as a teenager many times: “While we are here and alive what does [an afterlife] matter?”
I don’t think that majority of christians think about this question very clearly. Their actions denote that they believe it, but when they are asked outright about their purpose, they will flit and flounder and spit out some bible verses about “Go ye into the world and preach the gospel” or “Seek first the kingdom of heaven,” but the reality of it is that most of them are here to do what we all are here to do: further knowledge, teach others by way of having children for the most part, and strive to improve our own lives in hopes that those improvements will bleed over into the lives of others and eventually society.
As someone commented on another of my videos and as I’m starting to see a trend of this being pointed out in other YouTube videos, the lukewarm christian, the unreligious religious, and the outright hypocrites greatly outnumber the vocal minority that is currently trying to push their beliefs of what they think our existence is supposed to be onto others. If the point of existence is simply to use up all that we have been granted by a god, then the selfish and the greedy are to be exemplified as the highest order of human beings we could hope to attain. But seeing as how this isn’t the christian way, this isn’t the way we move forward as a global society, the aforementioned majority of believers shy away from supporting this idea but still support a system that rewards this greed and selfishness.
My existence is all that I have. Ignoring the arguments for or against an afterlife or previous lives, there is only this one chance. There is only from birth to death and the experiences and the effects we have on others and our world, both positive and negative.
To be stuck in a crisis of existence is to not live. Thinking that the answers to all the questions are out there and if only one seeks long enough they will find all of those answers and finally be able to take another step forward is detrimental to experiencing this glorious life and this wondrous existence. Since losing god, I’ve stopped looking into the supernatural for answers to where I should be or what those ethereal beings have planned for my life and I’ve regained the sovereignty I relinquished when I gave my life and my hope and my plans and my decisions and my dreams to an imaginary friend that could offer me no answers and no guidance but could offer me false comfort when I thought nothing else would sustain me, when I thought the world was conspiring against its plan for my life, and when I was unable to imagine let alone live a life where I was in control of my own destiny.
Special Note
As many of you know (based on the viewcount), I’ve started a secondary channel. So far there are only ramblings about me, my life, and some thoughts that go through my head. I hope to use this secondary channel as an all-original channel that will eventually see videos of the same caliber you are used to here on Xandar’s Meteor, but for the time being will be a sort of “Xandar Unplugged” with no scripts, no cuts, no editing, just me.
While there is no solid reason why you should subscribe to yet another channel, I hope to also use the second channel to post commentary on the videos I upload here.
Thanks again to all of you for making this channel a hit and as I finally crossed over and stayed over 800 subs, there may be a celebratory video posted mid week next week.
