Found Jehovah Witness tract

Found this art-ifact in my storm door yesterday. I really appreciate the axioms on the right: Satan doomed, Jesus successor, & God cannot lie.

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Seinfeld and Colbert "on" the comforts of our cosmic insignificance

For the past year or so, I’ve spent a good amount of my free time late at night (after the kids are finally asleep) “researching” nihilism and existentialism. Watching documentaries and interviews. Reading texts online and in print. On Monday I told this to a best friend with whom I hadn’t communicated in a few months. His response was less than enthusiastic and later that night, I immediately read an interview that essentially regurgitated the expressed sentiment. 

The book is called “Sick in the Head” and it’s a compilation of interviews [comedy movie-writer/producer/director] Judd Apatow did fairly recently with 40 super-famous comedians.

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JuddApatow: I read a lot of Zen but it ultimately makes me unhappy because I don’t want to be one drop in the ocean.

JerrySeinfeld: I do.

JuddApatow:  How do you get over that hump?

JerrySeinfeld: You look at some pictures from the HubbleTelescope™ and you snap out of it. I used to keep pictures of the Hubble™ on the wall of the writing room at Seinfeld™. It would calm me when I would start to think that what I was doing was important.

JuddApatow:  See, I go the other way with that. That makes me depressed. 

JerrySeinfeld: Most people would say that. People always say it makes them feel insignificant, but I don’t find being insignificant depressing. I find it uplifting.  

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Not long after reading this, I read another interview in the book where the interviewee essentially utilized the same anxiety-reducing technique albeit the terminology was decidedly more religious:

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StephenColbert: But also, when I was a kid, we had a tragedy in my family. My father and two of my brothers, Peter&Paul, the two closest in age to me, died in a plane crash. I was ten years old, and my mother, who had always been a very religious person — not overtly related to their death — would say to me — if anything was wrong with my life, if anything was going wrong — she would say, “Look at this in the light of eternity. What is this in the light of eternity?” In other words, don’t worry about this little thing.

JuddApatow: Okay.

StephenColbert:  And that light of eternity is another way of looking at everything. See it in the light of eternity. Don’t see this as your momentary worry. So, that helped me to not worry, and because my father and brothers had died, what could worry you more than that? From that point on, I never worried in school again. I maybe did my homework six times from age ten to eighteen.

JuddApatow: Wow.

StephenColbert: I barely graduated. I just read a lot of books, so I incidentally learned enough to bullshit by. There was no threat that anyone could hold over me. Nothing seemed important. So that made me think differently about almost everything that normally happened to a child. What are you going to threaten me with? What could a teacher possibly threaten me with?

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If I desired to be an AssholeTroll™, I could go all reducto ad absurdum on this perspective (because you can do that with ANY perspective), but I personally find comfort in the same sort of mental gymnastics utilizing this axiom of insignificance. As a writer who can think myself in circles and imagine scenarios from infinite perspectives, second-guessing myself and ridiculing my own self-worth comes second nature to me. And perhaps while it could be helpful to roll myself inside a rug and flail about my galactic meaninglessness, inevitable death, and tremendous impotence to affect human activity as a whole, I find it calming and liberating to surrender to this notion of insignificance. And thus able to decide my own values and not allow others (or my imagination of others' judgements) to yank me around.

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This summer I read and watched a lot of media regarding nihilism and existentialism. I got into all the mathematicians who went insane and starved themselves who (prior that that) brought forth evidence of the shaky bedrock of nigh emptiness upon which mathematics and logic resides.

After years of being (#1) a Roman Catholic apologists, (#2) a dues-paying member of AmnestyInternationalUSA™, and (#3) an advocate of lesser organized utopian principles, it has become clear to me that it is totally pointless to argue with someone with whom you don’t agree. They have their magical axioms with which they deeply identify. You attack it and they respond with fight-or-flight. But without smashing a brick in their face, ruining them economically, and/or threatening the death of their entire family, they are not going to concede defeat.

I have become so nihilistic that I could care less to what religion someone supposedly ascribes. There are the things people say they believe (or we assume they believe based on their affiliation with certain communities of Faith™ and/or sects) and how they actually operate in real life. When a doctor on the playground tells me he’s Mormon, I know every argument against Mormonism and I employ none of them nor have any desire to challenge their belief. Because it’s all pointless, so who the fuck cares?

Nonetheless, I do have axioms that dictate my behavior. Anchor me. For example, I have two young children. I want them to be happy and develop as healthily as possible. Become smart and capable. Thus, I interact with them in a certain way. We sacrifice expendable income to pay for private schooling that is very lenient on a child’s personal autonomy, whilst teaching the children social skills so they’re not a lousy snotty ultra-violent fuck that nobody likes.

And there other axioms of course, that cause this thus and thus and thus and thus. Like my desire to be a good writer that people read. Thus, my writing this stupid bullshit that only GoogleBots will actually read.

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StandToReason™ continued post...

So I read what Greg Kookl has to say about Moral Relativism in his article "Moral Relativism Self-Destructs." (http://www.str.org/articles/relativism-self-destructs#.VYsPwabRxzo) This is what he boils it down to near the end of the article:

If morals are entirely relative, there are no grounds for determining if any moral standard is deficient or unreasonable or unsound or if it's better or if it's barbaric or unacceptable. Those things are gone. In a relativistic world view, others' views--no matter how offensive to our intuitive sense of right or wrong-- can't be critiqued, they can't be challenged, they can't be praised, and they can't be faulted. And this is true of the opposing view that moral truth is absolute. If relativism is true then moral education becomes impossible and moral discussions become incoherent. 

In response, I googled Moral Relativism and found a lengthy "encyclopedic" article regarding the subject written by someone who promotes/explains moral relativism as a philosophy (http://www.iep.utm.edu/moral-re/). What follows is an adept rejoinder to Kookl's issue with moral relativism.

The fact that one moral outlook cannot be conclusively proved superior to another does not mean, however, that it cannot be judged superior; nor does it imply that one cannot give reasons for preferring it.

I think it's important to point out that our actions do not occur in a vacuum. If my son has his feelings hurt, he may want to spit in someone's face or he may want to meekly inform them in a verbal manner how they've hurt his feelings. Either action might be equivalent in the rating of "objective morality" but that does not mean I do not prefer him to take the latter action. Nor that I won't use my parental might and intellect to attempt to coerce him to regularly respond in that fashion. It's not about "objective morality", it's that I've found or believe -- in my middle-class USA white-skinned upbringing under the behavioral modeling of my late father -- that being cordial to others and not creating enemies elicits an easier life. Or I suppose. But that's a hell of a lot different than declaring that's how everyone should behave in every situation.

While driving across the state of Ohio (and back) to deliver my niece to a basketball camp, I stumbled upon some talk radio put on by an organization called StandToReason™ (str.org). They’re essentially a Christian™ apologetic organization. The guy talking, whom I believe was Greg Koukl, seemed pretty intelligent and adept at talking logic. I listened to him for a couple hours.

I went to the StandToReason website. I read an article by Greg Kookl on the morality of homosexuality. Like many moral arguments, there are words and words, sentences and sentences, paragraphs and paragraphs. But with astute eyes, one can boil down arguments to a single or handful of bases from which the argument stems.

http://www.str.org/articles/why-is-homosexuality-bad-in-itself#.VYgVmqbRxzo

“The simple answer to why homosexuality itself is bad is because it is a perversion of God’s provision regarding a deep and profound aspect of the created order. God made things one way because He's in charge. He created the world to function a certain way. There's teleology, a purpose to it, and when the purpose is fulfilled it's a beautiful thing.”

Human reproduction happens sexually, of course, but the offspring that have come from that sexual reproduction — in every generation — have operated in a myriad of different sexual behaviors and activities. And some of those activities lead to sexual reproduction amongst a heterosexual monogamously married couple — but most of them don’t. If Greg agreed that this is the “certain way” God created the world to function, then I’d have no qualms about what he’s arguing. But he’s not. He’s saying that only some of these behaviors/activities are God-ordained (I’m not sure of the nitty-gritty specifics since he’s not a Roman Catholic) while the others are perversions. And he’s got his reasons for his distinctions of what to put in the box of “appropriate sexuality”, but I argue it’s a totally human, artificial construct.

At this point, my mind's imaginary model of Greg Kookl outs me as a Moral Relativist. He rushes to the ReductioAdAbsurdum™ that selfless sacrifice to help the destitute is objectively the moral equivalent to a group of men gang-raping animals to death. And sure, objectively, it might be the moral equivalent, but it does not follow that I want that to happen. Or that I don’t want laws to prohibit such behavior. And the imaginary Greg says: “but what right do you have to cease that behavior?” And my response is that we don’t need objective-moral justifications for legally barring behavior, we simply need a strong enough manifestation of the WillToPower to bar such behavior (or punish/correct it post-act). And likewise, we haven’t needed moral justifications to bar gay marriage or legalize gay marriage, simply a stronger manifestation of the WillToPower. And in the past, that has been the case for why gay marriage wasn't allowed: because proponents for HeterosexualMarriageOnly™ were politically stronger.  But not for much longer, it seems.

Once I wrote a song with a band about wanting to fuck Jesus.

In another era and geographic location, this would've gotten me burned at the stake.

Today in my era, it gets a shrug, perhaps a laugh. Mostly ignored.

If I said it about another religion's [model of ideal behavior], I could've had my head cut off.

Why write  a song like this? Well, your bandmates start playing music and I come up with lyrics. My lyrics aren't initially about wanting to sexually arouse the Jesus. I'd been listening to some of the good singles from Marilyn Manson, such as where he sings "I'm not a slave to a god that doesn't exist." And I also had enjoyed "Jesus Freak" by DC Talk, when I was a devout believer in the Christian faith back in high school. So I started singing, "we're the freak; we're the freaks, if you know what I mean," along with some lyrics like "love your enemies like Jesus toppled tables; [something something] about Cain killing Abel; and all your prophets and all their glory are hindered by the fact that they're hopelessly so boring."

None of those lyrics got in. Instead, my bandmate sang his verse about sexual lust for Jesus and only wanting to give it up to this [ideal]; this concept made more sense for our band, so the lyrics changed.

But why write this song? Well, you have to fill in the emptiness of the days somehow, and when your bandmates have a musical score, you fill in the lyrics somehow. It's funny -- haha homophonic polysemy: freak has that second sexual meaning. One is supposed to love Jesus, but obviously NOT IN THAT WAY, ha haha ha haha, the laugh ejaculates.

Due to the homophobic nature of the predominate modern Christian church, I think it was my way of sticking up a middle finger to all those individuals who under the Christian cloth would shame people for being queer (in whatever form that may be: sexual orientation or gender identity).

I found this card, circa 2014, on the bathroom sink at a gas station // firework store called "Nervous Charlie's" in Nashville TN.