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Journal Excerpt 5

12-1-2019

Gods in religion act as the absolute summit of all ideals that their worshippers strive to be. This is what I consider to be the fundamental source of all religious conviction. The god you worship is the perfect follower of the ideals that your religion espouses. Having a god to worship gives one a higher calling or set of ideals to strive towards, and therefore an incentive for self-betterment. By extension, one does not necessarily need to worship a divine being in order to facilitate self-improvement. A god can simply be a character trait, or set of character traits, that one wishes to emulate. What large religions like Christianity and Islam do is the provide a set of well-established moral guidelines (which are psychologically important) to their followers. These guidelines are well-established because they’ve stood the test of time, with regards to their prevalence. They’re old-fashioned in the best sense. And therein lies a cornerstone of a good life: a set of strong moral beliefs to live by that can be used for motivation and that can readily be acted upon. The nice thing about morals is that they don’t have to be from religion. Morals and religion do not have to be the same thing.

I’m almost done reading The Case For Christ by Lee Strobel. The evidence for Jesus of faith and of history within the book is highly compelling and certainly stands up to scrutiny. Yet I do not choose to convert to Christianity. I already have my own strongly established morals, and as such, do not feel the need to supplant them with a religion. Of course, this is not to denigrate religion. Quite the opposite. Religion is often wonderful when it comes to providing moral guidelines for people, self-contradictory as it may be. But then again, the best sets of rules are often self-contradictory in one way or another. What works for one situation doesn’t always work for another. As an after-thought, I don’t think it is wise to convert to Christianity simply because this book is convincing and well-written. I need to do individual research into the historical texts themselves, like the ones that Strobel cites throughout the book.

Onto a different subject.

[REDACTED]

I also came to the conclusion that the psychological aspect of religion is severely under-appreciated. Religion has been a major driving force in society and culture for centuries, but its psychological effects and purpose are, I think, overlooked too often. (Read the start of this entry for more detail. The meaning should be clear.)

Just finished The Case For Christ!

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Journal Excerpt 4

17-25-2018

Just watched a movie called The Case For Christ. It’s based on a book of the same name by Lee Strobel. It was well acted, to the point that it felt authentic, at least as authentic as most movies or TV shows can be. What I mean to say is that when actors say their lines, they are reciting them from a script. As a consequence, this leaves very little room for “um” and “uh”. You don’t say those words when you’re reciting, but you do in real conversation. More movies should have this aspect of authenticity, as it would make the characters more relatable to the audience. As an exception, there is a scene near the end where Lee reveals his newfound belief to his wife, Leslie. They both kneel at the coffee table in their living room and Lee starts a prayer to God. While he pronounces his belief, he does stutter and say “um” a couple of times. That scene was the most heartfelt and authentic in the movie, not for the content of the lines, but for their humanly imperfect delivery. To be clear, this is not to say that I wouldn’t recommend the movie. Quite the opposite. Mike Vogel, who takes the role of Lee, organically depicts the journalist as a man who changes from a condescending and repudiative atheist to a quietly remorseful believer. With Leslie, played by Erika Christensen, we have an effective foil of warm empathy and emotive reasoning to Lee’s stubborn and coldly analytical nature.

Some other thoughts about the movie:

The part where Lee realizes that it was actually officer Koblinsky who caused the gunshot wound on himself with a pen gun comes at the beginning of the book, contrasting with how the same moment comes at the end of the movie. It was clearly meant to work as the start of a watershed moment for Lee’s transition from atheist to believer.

In the movie, which is inherently meant to portray a story, it would be more effective to have such a moment as part of Lee’s climactic realization. 

There wasn’t nearly as much attention devoted to Lee’s interviews with religious experts in the movie as there was in the book. 

Understandable. It would have been a boring movie if it were just a series of interviews. 

It’s more effective from a storytelling perspective to show the relationship between the members of the Strobel family and how it changes throughout the movie along with their religious beliefs. 

In this way, the emotions are touched far more easily.

23-12-2018

[REDACTED]

And I realized then that words only capture the surface of our Being. Our language, as humans, does not have the capacity to accurately describe or depict existence as we perceive it. Words carry emotion to an extent, but they are puny compared to the emotion of experience, which is itself a key descriptor of existence. This also led me to question what existence even is. I know that it is incomprehensible in its entirety to the human brain, but it is what our senses make of the world that surrounds us. That much is true to us at least. Another thing I contemplated was the purity and intensity of emotion that I felt during [REDACTED], something that I haven’t felt in a long time. The feeling gave me a sense of true hope for the future. It also forced me to confront the fact that I’ve been subjecting myself to mindless entertainment for years. What I’ve been watching and scrolling over really isn’t conducive to a satisfying life. It’s all an ultimately useless distraction from the more pressing issues in life. It’s a big fucking fraud, but unfortunately a very profitable one at that.

A lot of arguments that I’ve seen, including the ones I had (in a somewhat civilized manner) with [REDACTED] and her boyfriend [REDACTED], consisted of statements that were just abstractions or oversimplifications of what are fundamental truths or ideas. That is, they were reductive to the entire meaning of the words that they sought to convey. Such a way of abstracting or simplifying follows the idea that words only capture the surface of our Being. We can’t compress experience and the feelings that come with them into words, and therein lies the descriptive weakness of words. Ironic, considering that words are our most frequently used way of describing anything.

It was in [REDACTED]’s bedroom that I experienced what could only be described as complete ego death. [REDACTED] was watching [REDACTED]’s cat, Baggy, who was lying on the bed. I had gone up the stairs just to do some walking when I saw Baggy through the bedroom door and got down on both knees to pet her from the foot of the bed. The entirety of my sense of existence was the sight of Baggy on the bed and the feeling of her fur under my hand as I pet her. She eventually stretched out, clearly enjoying the petting. It was at that point that I started petting Baggy with just my fingertips and not my entire hand. In this way, I could her bones in a very detailed manner. It was a surprising contrast between her cute, somewhat brushily defined appearance and the hardness and uncomfortable smallness of her bones. It dawned on me then that there is a cold mechanism of reality that runs the cuteness. From the way Baggy’s fur grows and forms to the chemicals that are released in my brain, the sensation of my then-narrowed existence was the result of physical processes.  

25-12-2018

Emotions are a greater descriptor of existence than words. Perhaps emotions and intuitions are how higher beings communicate to one another. But why are they greater than words?

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Journal Excerpt 3B

(Continued from previous excerpt)

The future comes for us all, but no one seems to want to face it together, or talk about it, for that matter. This attitude is another underlying issue in how we mentally and emotionally prepare ourselves for what’s to come. People tend to not like being vulnerable in front of others, especially if they are strangers. But openly facing your fears and anxieties with someone else makes it so much easier. But how does this all really relate back to finding purpose and meaning in life? It has do with changing one’s mechanisms of suffering (see p.26-27). That is, one has to alter one’s idea of what suffering is, and that is no easy task. When you can only be negatively affected by true suffering, then purpose and meaning are yours to claim.

6-11-2018

Not much was said about what these values were specifically, so I’ll do that. The first one I’ve heard referred to as ‘moral relativism’. It consists of applying the “there’s no right or wrong” mindset to many things in life [particularly cultural values]. With humans, this obviously can’t be true, given as we are to bias and prejudice. For instance, we all know that if you shoot a person in the street, everyone will have a reaction of some sort, usually negative. Such an event demonstrates the universality of humans’ abhorrence of murder, which helps to negate the idea of moral relativism. There are universal morals, I think, but they are very broad and vague.

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Journal Excerpt 3A

5-11-2018

I think that the values my peers and I have been brought up with (as well as attitudes) are not preparing us for the rapid pace of change, namely technological, in today’s society. It would certainly help to explain the lack of meaning that so many in the younger generations seem to have in their lives. It’s not often talked about, but it is there in our thoughts. The advances of technology today continue to be ever more impressive, from SpaceX rockets to AI and everything else in between, but it comes at a cost. Things like automation and growing social inequality gradually deprive people of the means to find meaning in their lives. What once required the work of 20 people can now be done by one person. What about those other 19 people? What do they do? How do they cope with the chaos of their life being uprooted like that? In most cases, not very well. We simply are not set up to allow people to philosophize and create freely, which is fundamentally where meaning or purpose is found in life. We so strongly prioritize the pursuit of materials wealth that to pursue anything purely idealistic tends to be seen as foolish and naïve. But this stigma stems from the fact one needs to earn money in order to house and feed oneself in today’s world. Idealistic pursuits are not always good at this.

Back to values and attitudes. People are understandably worried about what things like AI and automation will do to their lives. This sort of worrying is counterproductive to mental health. One of the cornerstones of what I think would greatly help many in finding purpose is to live in the present ー to be mindful. Thankfully, this is starting to gain traction. But mindfulness alone is not enough. We need to be able to embrace change and live with it. Thrive with it, even. But of course, this is difficult to do if such change takes away your livelihood, and therein lies the crux of the problem with finding meaning and purpose in today’s world. Unfortunately, a significant restructuring of societal roles, hierarchies, and norms would need to take place in order to realize the idea of free pursuit.

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Journal Excerpt 2

25-10-2018

I had a really funny dream. In it, I could teleport at will, so I decided to dick around with the power. The dream took place on the UW campus, I should say. I ran into a classroom in Mary Gates Hall wearing only a really ugly old pair of shoes with dirty white socks and a George W. Bush mask.

26-10-2018

cont. from yesterday -> CFY (this will be the new acronym)

Wearing that outfit, I also had a bag of dildos and threw them aggressively at the teacher and the students. I then dumped the rest of the dildos on to the floors and sprinted out of the classroom into the bathroom (empty) where I promptly teleported back to my apartment. I repeated this over the following weeks, and I came to be known as Dildo Baggins because I carried dildos in a bag. Eventually, the UW took actions to try and catch me, leading to a police presence (much, much heavier) on campus. I would run away from the cops as I fled the scene of my latest ritual and flee into a nearby bathroom where I would teleport back to my apartment, cackling all the while. They were so pissed. They simply couldn’t figure out how I managed to disappear because they didn’t know about my teleporting abilities.

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Journal Excerpt 1B

31-8-2018

As you seek out anything in life, be it your next meal or a new job or a relationship, you create value by attaching it to what you seek. I suspect that the creation of emotional MoS is rooted in psychological causes. The concepts of reinforcement and punishment immediately jump to mind. When you acquire what you value, you associate positive emotions with that acquisition. Ostensibly, you really like that feeling, so you keep wanting to get more of what you value. This is what psychologists call positive reinforcement. Now that I think about it, the FEoC has a great deal to do with how one decides what is of value and what isn’t. This makes sense because the FEoC dictates how a person responds to external stimuli (and even internal stimuli, while we’re at it).

More on FEoC later.

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Journal Excerpt 1A

31-8-2018

During my vacation in Canada this summer, [REDACTED] brought up an intriguing thought. He said that as we create value (attach it to objects, places, ideas, etc.), we also create mechanisms of suffering. My immediate mental response to this was that we do so in order to incentivize the seeking of higher value. But this answer, to my intuition, seems shallow and insufficient. It doesn’t feel like a revelation. Maybe it’s not supposed to. I suppose this makes sense because I am providing a rational (at least, in a somewhat economics-related manner) explanation of someone else’s observation. A better way to respond, I think, would be to ask how we automatically create mechanisms of suffering (MoS). MoS, as I interpret it, consists of anything you find to be unpleasant or worth avoiding. In short, suffering. But the question of how we create persists. More specifically, how we create mechanisms of emotional (this is what we’ll focus on) and physical suffering.