2001-01-15 00:53:45

When I think about it, I realize I am really alone. Is no man an island, or is every man an island, unto himself? I don't know. I think that I am really alone, even when I try to connect with people. I can't ever really know what they are thinking. I can try to anticipate it. Even when I read something a person writes, I am only getting a part of what that person thought. It's better than not getting anything at all, but it isn't as good as really understanding them.

I think all the talk I've gotten in over the past month or so about existence and the absurd has messed with my mind. I am starting to think that there is no real commonality. There seems to be similarity in human experience, but I don't think there is anything we all share. Even the so called shared experience that people can have is interpreted differently among the individuals. They might respond the same way to it, but they do so for different reasons.

Essence begins at existence. That is a quote my philosophy teacher gave us last semester toward the end, when we started the existentialists. I think it's a paraphrase of a quote that Sartre first wrote. The original is something like "Existence preceeds essence." It isn't really satisfying for me any more to cling to one specific truth, because I now realize due to the sheer chaos and difference in the universe, there isn't any one Truth that will stand up to anything. Does God exist? Maybe. I'm tempted to just say it should be a mu-answer, as described by Pirsig in ZMM. The mu-answer is neither a yes or a no to a poorly phrased question. It doesn't really matter if God exists, as long as I believe. Belief may not be rational, but I am about done with the idea that reason is the sole arbiter of the world. I have tried to make everything else subordinate to reason in my life, and it has proven to be a detrimental pursuit. If putting reason ahead of anything else, even when I feel things intensely, is the way it should be, then I am about ready to shoot the people who came up with reason. It has given us a lot of good things and has increased our racial progress, but it has also caused a slew of tremendous problems. Perhaps I like the existentialists because I know that I want to live my life based on my principles. I don't want to give in, and I don't want to sell them off for something else. Everything that's in me is railing against the constant little influences that poke and peck at me and try to make me lose my way. Everything in me is railing against the times when I fall prey to those influences. But it happens. Perhaps I am not really alone?

I've pondered a few times the possibility of going to a monastery of some sort and just soaking up the solitude there. That's real solitude. You work and you meditate or pray, you eat, and you work and you meditate or pray, then you sleep. I suppose I would get restless soon thereafter, which seems to be the main reason why I always seem to shove the idea off somewhere. It comes back every once in a while, though.

The question isn't to be or not to be. The question is, should I seek to live as I see I ought, or should I let others decide for me what my life is and where it will go? You can't not be, really. People want to define themselves based on what they aren't, but I think this idea is rooted in the mode of thought that says you always need to think about what other people think of you. It's almost like spiritual communism. You need to work for the good of all. You need to do things that you don't like because you need to help other people. When do you ever get any help? By the time you get that help, you're a wreck, and you feel shitty for having to rely on other people. Is that analogy really correct though? I'm not sure. I'll probably read it again some time in the future and realize what it should have been. Until then, I will have satisfy myself with what I have.

I am a Sad Buddha Before - Who knows? - After - List - Home - Diaryland
Great Maker! Before - Who knows? - After - List - Home - Diaryland
Darkness descends on the Raven Before - Who knows? - After - List - Home - Diaryland