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Manual For Living -Michael Salamey-
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—Forward—
This book is probably not for you. I have written it with knowledge that most people will not deeply understand or apply its principles. This is not due to of a lack of intelligence, but rather because they are unwilling to give up their current Manual for Living. You might recognize you have already written your Manual for Living—the personal code of ethics, habits, values and morals you choose to live by, and you are satisfied, mostly, with your manual and your life. How can I assume you are mostly satisfied with your life in an era where self-help, life-coaching and personal guidance are enormously profitable ventures? Clearly, many seek a new or improved value system; the reading of this book would appear to be its own testament to that. I make such an assumption because it is a logical one. I postulate you are (mostly) happy with the way you live your life by virtue of your accepting the way you live it. If you are driven to self-improvement books as tools for enhancing the quality of your life, it is unlikely you sense a need for change in your value system; it is more likely you are trying to resolve personal complaints about things you feel you are entitled to, in Life. You want different answers to the question, “Why?”. Why am I unhappy? Why do I not own a better car? Why should I have to struggle to make ends meet? Why can I not find the right romantic partner? Why do I hate my life? Why do I this, or why am I like that? Why, why, why? You keep asking the same question, you keep getting the same answers, and you don’t understand…WHY. And why don’t you understand? Because you are asking the wrong question. The question you should consider instead, is “What?”. What…are you willing to do about it? You probably already know that answer, though you may not readily acknowledge it. It is this: “Not much.” Few people move to understand their personal value system, let alone take action with intent to create a new one. Usually, under the guise of self-development, we are only checking if the odd conglomeration of other peoples’ values, that we have accepted, is approved by the majority of people in our social circles. I am fond of a recent cliché: Everyone is an individual…just like everyone else. Maybe there are a few specific areas of your life you are not fully satisfied with, and you may find insight or valuable information in this book to help with those areas—a different perspective on a persistent complaint. What I offer, however, is not a way to be healthier, wealthier, happier, more self-confident or more passionate with your partner, etc… The reason you have not been healthy, wealthy, happy, self-confident, or passionate to your fullest capability is because you were not provided with proper tools to be. Put simply: in life, you never had a chance. Those you were dependent on for survival—your parents and peers—never accepted the responsibility or accountability for providing you with proper tools to be successful and you did not take it upon yourself to seek those tools (other than perhaps to diminish some of those more persistent complaints). My offer, then, is to deconstruct the things you have been conditioned not to question, or even recognize as questionable, and to provide new instruction for you to create an empowering methodology by which to live your life as a whole (person). Keep this analogy of your life in mind, however: For most of your life, you have been trying to drive a nail into a dense piece of wood with a marshmallow. I am giving you a hammer. Choosing whether or not to continue using the marshmallow is up to you.
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1. FAITH
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—I am not a working man; I am a Man that Works.— Before "Manual for Living", I considered titling this book, "A Logical Living", or "Living Logically", or "Living With Logic". Logic, obviously, being the central premise I wished to convey. It is a rarity for most people to ask themselves this simple question: "Why do I believe that?" It is likely (for those who do ask) to answer, ultimately, with a more or less well concealed variation of, "Because I do." It is further uncommon to probe deeper into self-inquiry: "Why do I believe that? Is what I believe logical?" —An argument for Logic— Why should I care if my beliefs are logical? They are, after all, beliefs, to be taken on faith. I have been taught many times that not believing in something does not mean something does not exist—the obvious example being God. I have seen cleverly worded and reassuring slogans and platitudes in the media with sayings like, "It doesn't matter if you believe in God; He believes in you." This is the argument for Faith, which is a thin disguise for proclaiming, I believe what I believe because I believe it and therefore it is true (regardless of proof offered in refute). This, of course, is the perfect argument; the faithful win by simply claiming all opposing arguments invalid. Zealots and those who choose to ignore what they fear or distrust hide behind the precept, if I cover my eyes the monster will disappear. The ignorant cite Faith as a child shields himself from the imaginary creature in the closet by pulling a blanket over his head. An ignorant man clings to the covers, ignoring what he fears may lie beyond them, when faced with a logical juxtaposition to his belief system. Put another way, you can’t argue with a zealot. Faith is the answer to the question: How can I justify that which is not aligned with a logical universe? Faith, to the ignorant, grants a comforting numbness—it relieves Man of his duty to think; it supposes that something is, by virtue only of one’s insistence that it is. —A is A— The universe allows no space beneath the blanket of feigned ignorance and Faith-mongering. The universe is logical and as such, dictates everything that exists must exist in a specific way, through a specific means, for a specific purpose, and does not exist any other way. This is proved by Aristotle’s Law of Identity, famously depicted by philosopher Ayn Rand as a central theme to her novel, Atlas Shrugged. The Law of Identity is a fundamental principle of living a logical life, without contradiction. It is the clearest and most elegantly worded of all philosophical principles and the most important. Put simply, the Law of Identity states this: A is A. Within that tiny phrase lie implications to understand the fundamental design of the universe. A is A. Te fundamental concept of the Law of Identity is that there are no contradictions in the universe. This means A is never B. Protons, for example, are not randomly or sporadically protons; they are always protons. Protons never perform the functions of electrons or ions; they are protons. Although I may share many similar attributes with others (I am human; I have skin, hair, a stomach, etc.) I am me and always me; I am never someone else, and I can never be someone else in the exact same way, at the exact same time as that person. My car is always a car; it is never a duck, whether I claim it to be or not. The Law of Identity tells me the Universe is not random; it has a specific, knowable design. It is a logical construct, existing purposefully the way it exists and no other way. It is the Law of Identity that allows us to live in a logical world, where cars are not randomly ducks, stars are not sporadically books, and I am not occasionally a telephone pole. A is never B. A is A. —The purpose of God— Logically speaking, then, if the Universe and everything within it has a design and specified function, everything must have therefore been designed for a specified purpose, but there is little logic to how Faith relates to the concept of a Grand Designer, or Creator. Religious “faiths” preach of God as a perfect entity—omniscient and omnipotent. God is flawless, with complete knowledge of the fate of every man and an ultimate plan for everything that has, or ever will, happen. God, they sermonize, creates everything and judges everyone. That is the function of God. This is inherently illogical; it lends itself to at least two major conundrums. The first conundrum is this: if God has a function—a specific purpose, a design—then logically, He must have been designed as well; He had a Designer. For something to have a function, that function must be assigned—my computer, for example, has several functions, but something had to delegate what those functions are—my computer can not exist as a functionless entity. Yet, how could God have been created or designed if He is the Creator and Designer of all things? Who assigned God the function of God? Here is the second conundrum: God is perfect. Using this assumption, logic dictates by virtue of being perfect, everything God creates must therefore be a perfect creation (because He is a perfect Creator) and thus nothing would require judgment by God (because everything is already perfect). Yet it is assumed His function is to judge. —Wrong question— A question the devoutly religious fail to ask is: "WHY do I believe what I think I believe?" The unacknowledged answer is in all cases the same: a variant of, “…Because I do”, or “Because someone told me to.” These are the most dangerous people in the world—those who intentionally choose to ignore what is dictated by the simplest of logic, those who remain ignorant—nescient—on a basis of laziness or fear, but will defend retarded beliefs with the conviction of a legal prosecutor, or a zealot. As with nearly everything they believe, the Nescient have not questioned the rationale of what they accept as concrete, and are conditioned to fear doing so by parents, preachers, and teachers who peddle corrupt lessons from a corrupt work of fiction they have further corrupted in their teaching from it. Parents teach children as they are taught, reinforcing beliefs never questioned, researched, or logically considered before regurgitating flawed knowledge to their offspring. Someone told the Nescient the Bible is the word of God, so the ignorant claim it is God’s words. The same people heed a preacher, born with no additional knowledge, wisdom, insight, or capacity for goodness than with which they have been born. Do the Nescient question for themselves the origin of the Bible? That would constitute a challenge to their Faith-belief system, something the Nescient expressly forbid themselves and others to do. They condition each other instead to accept a preacher’s words on faith, even substituting the word “religion” for the word “faith”. Indeed, at the time of this writing, I have yet to make the acquaintance of a person truly believing in a logically viable God, but nearly every person I meet, believes he believes as such. —Funeral for Truth— I am reminded of a funeral I attended. The pastor spoke eloquently and passionately of a glorious afterlife. A woman I shall call Susannah grieved over her mother, who died a few days before. I sat in a pew when Susannah took the pastor’s place and spoke from the pulpit, sharing what she supposed were wonderful things about the deceased. Susannah cried often, or choked back tears, while espousing the saddest, most melodramatic memories available to her, regarding her mother’s life. After Susannah, the pastor spoke again—a frail, pale, and timid woman. Her head sunk into her shoulders and her eyes hid behind large seeing glasses. She habitually raised her thin right hand when she was engrossed in her own preaching or singing. Between songs praising Jesus or supposedly worshipping God, other people took turns lamenting, mourning, or sometimes railing about religion/faith, against the non-believers, whom the zealots were assured would be condemned to eternal damnation for living at their own discretion. The crowd sang hymns and spoke of honoring God. Honoring God, honoring one’s self, and honoring each other, certainly, but, I noted, pausing for a cigarette break, to desecrate their bodies—by their claim, the physical temple of His creation. They preached of the Lord's benevolence and love for all creatures—great and small—and followed the service with a luncheon, eating the dead flesh of other supposedly beloved creatures. A father, who chose to be alcoholic, spoke several minutes about his faith in God and Jesus, how they had saved his life, how he lived for them and could do nothing without their power and guidance. I wondered if that included his over-indulgence in booze, cheating on his wife, and the many times he chose to forsake his commitment to his family’s well-being. Susannah took solace, though, that her mother was in a better place because her mother had accepted Jesus into her heart, and Susannah pitied us who had not accepted Jesus. I understood then, what religion is to these people, to my own family, to those who ignorantly accept the same moral premise; I understood why they cling so desperately to it, and how they are somehow able to justify every action they take in contradiction. Here is the secret hidden behind the veil of "faith": Faith absolves Man of responsibility as the active creator of his life. If God is in control of everything, then nothing is my fault. Since Jesus already forgave my sins, I am by default a Sinner, and therefore I will sin (this is the logic of "Original Sin"—the biblical dictum claiming we are all sinners by relation to Eve, who made the first sin—eating from the apple, of the Tree of Knowledge). By virtue of believing there is a greater power controlling my destiny and by accepting a doctrine of Original Sin, I do not have to be responsible for myself, for my actions, or for who I am except to the point where I feel convinced of general acceptance by my peer group—that is the mentality of Faith. I can harbor a pasty-faced wreck of a physical body because I declare Jesus and God love me unconditionally. I can be an abusive or negligent parent and spouse because Jesus loves me despite my sins. Of interesting note, the faithful preach unconditional love, yet set conditions to love others. The Nescient would never question whether Jesus was more benevolent than, for example, Gandhi. Jesus is the king of Love to the faithful, but by their assertion, if you do not accept Jesus into your heart, you are condemned to eternal damnation and torture in Hell. By contrast, if you were not to accept Gandhi into your heart, he did not seem to hold such a grudge. Perhaps the British should be grateful he was not omnipotent. —Gee, that God sure is Convenient—
It is illogical for God—a perfect Creator—to set conditions for His love in return. It would be akin to claiming if my goldfish does not accept me into its heart, I shall boil it (or at the least, I shall let someone else boil it). If such a thing as God exists the way the Nescient would have us believe it to exist, then why would He be both the epitome of mercy and mercilessly vengeful? Would such be the perfect logic of a perfectly logical Creator?
It is the Nescient mentality that states I can be an alcoholic cheat or an abusive lout because God made me this way and I can not help whom I am. I am doing the best I can. Conversely, I can justify living with an abusive alcoholic cheating husband because it is the Christian thing to do—what kind of person would I be to abandon someone who needs me? How would God judge me if I left this person only because he occasionally mistreats me, disrespects me, disregards me, abandons me, or intentionally hurts me?
Indeed. Perhaps the question should be, "How should He judge me if I stay?"
Such
fallacies run rampant among the faithful. The Nescient recreate
their moral code at their convenience, adding amendments to commandments,
"Thou shalt not kill... unless it is burger night." —Mirror image— The Christian Bible dictates Man is made in God's image. Were it true by any account, then Man's worst offense to God is that, in fact, Man has created God in Man's image. This is the essence of religion. Men place words in their silent God's mouth, speak them, and then claim to hear the voice of God. Men bestow God with a personality. He is benevolent, merciful, noble, and good (but also vengeful and merciless as convenient). He is a He (although sometimes jokingly, to appease feminists, He may be a She). Men dare claim to know the whims, wishes, and will of this humanistic God. Indeed, God created in Man's image even has a son (to Christian faiths)—a human son, no less. The absurdity of this statement is its own argument against it. I submit this stems from a lack of understanding regarding the sheer scope of the universe and humanity's place in it. The Nescient preach men must be humble before God, and warn against vanity, but what is vainer than having audacity enough to assume the Creator of the Universe—of all planets, stars, galaxies, light, matter, and energy, would want a human baby? What is vainer than placing the remote speck of all humanity above the entire Universe, to insinuate of all grandeur created, God was so enamored with the warring cave-dwellers on a blade of grass in His backyard, that He wanted a little baby boy? Absurd, but perhaps there is something vainer—the assumption that God thinks and acts like a man at all. Again, the nescient are fond of touting "God is Good", but good as defined by Man’s standards of general acceptance by his peers—there is no objective description or standard with which to measure what is "good" or "bad" in the Bible (or anywhere I know of, for that matter). How, do you suppose, Man can know what “Good” is, as a standard determination of moral guidance, to something such as God? What can Morality be to God? Consider great Redwood trees, which can live hundreds of years, surviving fire, drought, hurricanes, earthquakes, disease…even mankind. In their lifetimes, cities rise and fall, generations of celebrities are born, become famous, grow old, fall out of fame and die, inventions are invented and outlive their usefulness, the world is how it is and the Redwoods live on silently. By way of judging moral character, do you suppose a great Redwood considers it "bad" if the city of San Diego elects a corrupt city official? Would a Redwood tree consider it "good" if a book was written that benefits all of mankind, even though it would likely be printed and distributed via massacre of other trees? Does it matter to a Redwood if I am raped? If my house is robbed? If my mother dies of cancer? Does a Redwood tree believe Christians are good and Muslims are bad? Do Redwoods think war is justifiable by any reason? A Redwood is merely a long-lived tree. Now consider something as truly unfathomable and infinite as God. To the entity that created everything, is rape different or more significant than the destruction of an entire solar system by a black hole? Does a corrupt city official mean anything next to millions of planets being birthed in the universe within the same time-span? Is a popular book "good"…on Jupiter? In the Andromeda Galaxy? To cosmic background radiation? Does a bank being robbed matter…to Time? Then, how would it matter to the Creator of Time? If anything matters to God at all, it matters in a way our miniscule brains could comprehend no better than a flea can comprehend Hydrogen Fission in the Sun. With respect to Man's presumably unique intellect, facing the true experience of God is impossible by any scale for a mote in the universe, such as Mankind. There is no logical foundation to assume inconsequential made-up concepts such as “good” or “bad” can have any meaning whatever to an ultimate creator, except the meaning we designate among ourselves. The nescient, however, do not accept responsibility or accountability for being creators of their lives, for being the finders of meaning. They choose, instead, to superimpose Man’s values on God, to create God in Man’s image and say, “God is this” or “God is that” or “I am doing God’s will”. They insist that Man is created in God’s image with no logical surety; it is so only by virtue of their insistence. —The good book— It is within the policy of the nescient to accept at face value the word of the Bible. The Bible being in actuality a work of forty or so men, gathered from many orally handed-down stories told by other men, compiled by men into a single tome, written and reproduced by men, of which some stories were chosen for inclusion, and some were not, at the discretion of men. The only thing missing from the equation of the Bible is, indeed, God. When faced with historical facts, nescient people, to remain in their state of ignorance, have but a single choice: to refute such facts by clinging to mysticism or refuse to accept the absence of truth in their value system. They rationalize at any cost, to retain the irresponsibility of their living, often beginning with phrases like, "Well, then how do you explain…" For example, "Well then how do you explain how Jesus predicted the end of the world is near and how everything he said is coming true?" The answer to which is, "Nothing he predicted has come true, except through the illusion of loose interpretation." The year 2000—the vaguely interpreted year of the supposed Armageddon—came and went. Nothing significantly biblical happened. Jesus preached of Armageddon being near even in his time. He was certain the End was coming soon, believing it to be within his own mortal lifetime. The Nescient blindly, dumbly, refuse to accept statements of fact by taking heart in knowing they are going to a magical place called Heaven, whereas "non-believers" have succumbed to an imaginary succubus who will torture them eternally as punishment for their rationality. What logic would God have for allowing this punishment? Again, when you remove Man’s superimposed irrationality from the equation, there is no logic inherent. What need would God have of Lucifer, or Hell? Why would the Creator of galaxies have a vested interest in torturing, for all eternity, a single mortal speck of a speck who was judged "mean" or "bad" by other specks? (I use the term “mortal” loosely, of course, as anyone spending eternity in damnation is clearly not mortal.) —Loose case for Lucifer— There may be a God, of sorts, based on the unique and forthright machinations of matter and space-time. The purposeful tapestry of the Universe and the Law of Identity allude to such a conclusion. But there is no devil. There is no logical basis to support the claim of a malevolent being granted existence by the grace of God to torture and destroy God’s creations. It is another example of a flaw in the "Perfect Creator" idealism. Were God perfect, it is illogical He would need, create, or allow the existence of His antithesis. The lynchpin of the Devil-in-Hell idea is the granting of free will to Man, by God. This notion supposes Man is the singular being in the Universe with power to choose between right and wrong…but what choice is there if God has dictated choosing "wrong" means eternal damnation? If any human truly believes such a concept, there is no choice and thus, no free will. Eternity in Hell does not appeal to any person, assuming said person actually believes and understands the concept of Hell. Further, how can any man have free will in the face of beings that can create or destroy anything, including choices? Heaven, Hell, and Free Will are further super-impositions of human vanity to the concept of a humanistic Creator. Satan is a fear tactic designed to instill conformity and modify behavior to the whim of the people dictating, by their discretion, what is "good" or what is "bad". The logical identity of Satan would be the person or people admonishing others to do as they say lest face the consequences—the wrath of damnation at the throne of Evil incarnate. Evil incarnate, therefore, is Church, and possibly the Bush administration (go figure). I am compelled to articulate this is not a case for Atheism, or devil-worship, or even Agnosticism. There is no devil—it is not questionable. Thus, there is no devil to worship, endorse, or otherwise advocate allegiance to. There is no fear tactic to instill. The logical result is not a default world of chaos or anarchy—it instead leaves the proper value judgment of moral behavior in the providence of a rational Mankind—the sole being in the universe that can objectively reason what men should and should not do to sustain a proper and efficacious living. “Heaven” and “Hell” are variations of “Good” and “Bad”—as such, neither exists except in the context of concepts. The Nescient refuse to allow option 3, which is to do their homework, to simply look into the facts and make logical inquiries of the answers against the simplest tests of rationality. Question nothing, if it is easier than challenging it. —Santa's Claws— Monotheistic faiths make much ado over the alleged hearsay of God stating no other shall be put before Him, that worship of any other God is blasphemy, that there is only one God and all others are false gods. I find it a personal matter of amusing irony that in the typical fashion of the Nescient, their rules only apply as convenient. Of all false idols, I think of none more mocking, insidious, or more strictly worshipped than the marketing juggernaut…of Santa Claus. Christmas is the most celebrated holiday of the year, and it is heralded by a magical being in a devilishly red suit that assesses every child’s history from the prior year and rewards “good” children with presents while punishing “bad” children by leaving them lumps of coal. I will not specifically address the historical origins of the holiday of Christmas, which is alleged to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ, other than to say there is so much incongruent with its intentions—from the date, to the multiple Pagan roots, to the marketing nightmare it instills, to the many fallacies perpetuated by parents and Media, I could write a separate book on this topic alone. Luckily, others have already done so competently and I have little desire to repeat their efforts. However, I will make a cursory comparison between the American/Christian concept of Santa (the most popular and widely known version) to the American/Christian concept of God, to illustrate the lack of distinction between the two. Christians insist God exclaimed there shall be no other before Him, that God alone, is God, and any other God-like entity is a false idol for which believers will burn in Hell for worshipping. Christians, and most of the industrialized world, go to great lengths to have children believe in Santa Claus—the jovial (and also vindictive) old man with mystic powers. Among these powers are omniscience—Santa knows and judges every child without ever seeing them; He determines whether a child has been naughty or nice ("good" or "bad") throughout the year. He is the savior of the good children, bestowing wonderful gifts upon them from their wish-list (Heaven) or torturing them by depriving them of gifts and slipping lumps of coal under their pillow as punishment for their non-conformist behavior (Hell). Santa is omnipotent—He bestows his reward or punishment to every child in the world in a single night; in America He is depicted as a rather fat man, yet He magically fits into the smallest of chimney flues. He never grows older—Santa has supposedly been around for hundreds of years and does not suffer health problems, despite His girth or age. The correlations can be taken further (the reindeer as angels, for example), but the point is: a fallacy is a fallacy and religion is fraught with lies and inconsistencies, yet the Universe itself is not. I allow simple credit for key aspects of some individual religions (Islam, for example, for having rational sense to understand God can not have a human son; and Jehovah's Witnesses—for rationalizing the inherent fault of celebrating holidays), but I do not absolve any religion of its overall inherent and malicious intent. —Judge not…— Most people, despite their religion, relate to God as a simple wish-fulfilling genie. Their answer to crisis or fear is to remove responsibility and accountability for their lives in the form of prayer. When faced with trouble, trauma, tribulation, or even death, their first (and often only) move is to beg God to fulfill their wishes (not unlike the way they encourage their children to do of Santa). They pray/wish for God to cure their aunt's cancer, or help their neighbors through financial trouble, or make their heartbreak over a relationship easier. Never do they admit or accept their aunt has cancer because she chose to smoke cigarettes for thirty years, or their neighbors are in financial jeopardy because they were not responsible with their money, or their significant other left them because of their cheating and ill-treatment. Always, the solution, for the Nescient, is absolution. Prayer is the answer. God is Santa Claus; He grants wishes to the deserving. However, if the wish is not granted, it is not because the Nescient did not deserve it; in such a case, it is simply "not meant to be" or "not God's will" or some other nonsense. It is never "my fault I ended up this way and my responsibility to get out of the mess I created or allowed to happen". Prayer is their answer, not culpability. The Nescient admonish each other not to judge, lest they themselves be judged, out of fear the verdict may bring them to be held accountable for their actions. Not judging anyone allows everyone to be irresponsible and equally guiltless in committed crimes. Prayer is their answer, but what was their secret, internal question? The question was, "How can I get away with it?" —Jesus on Holiday— I came to the decision not to celebrate Christmas, or any holidays or birthdays by research of their historical origins and education regarding what each is intended to celebrate. In my personal estimation, holidays are another method for the Nescient to cover truth, or pretend to be oblivious to truth. In learning about a given holiday, I asked, "What are the moral values of this holiday? Do I support these values? Am I aligned with the intended precept behind the historical event I have been trained to celebrate?" If I was able to align myself with the answers to those questions, I went further, "What is the current social premise behind this holiday? Am I aligned with that?" Under the scrutiny of these questions, no holiday survived. Thanksgiving, for example, is a holiday where everyone is to be thankful, filled with gratitude, and giving to others. Thankful for what, though? Why am I forced to give to others? The answers are, "thankful for whatever charity I believe life has bestowed upon me" and "because I have been trained to feel obligated to give to others as penance for whatever success I have attained". Beyond that, the historical origin of this holiday has little to do with gratitude. Thanksgiving is a celebration of the pilgrims' survival of the first winter in what is now America. As legend dictates, the puritans were able to survive with the assistance of Native American Indians. After the first winter, they celebrated with the Indians for three days. The fate of those Native Americans would later become torture, rape, slavery, and the burning of pillaged and plundered communities, and war, by the same puritans, in the name of "God". The intent of the puritans, I believe, was always to spread, to take the land where they arrived unbidden and unwelcome, rape it of its resources and command its native people, at whatever cost. This is not unlike America of 2007—a country that wages war with impunity, hiding the intent of bureaucratic aims through media sheep-herding and claims of adhering to the will of the people (indeed—but which people?). Against that judgment of this socially demanded day of thanks, I am not aligned with values of murder, slavery, rape, or the stealing or taking of property of any person in the name of anything, or nothing. Therefore, I choose not to celebrate Thanksgiving. Other holidays follow suit, but I will digress from breaking down my specific rationale for each, in this book. —For every action…— In broader terms, I do not celebrate holidays because of the aforementioned media "sheep-herding". This is the state of automation the Nescient long to receive—where Orwellian media and government dictate every thought and action under guises of convenience, necessity, or safety. Thus, the Nescient are herded to celebrate the birth of a man on a day in a month in which He was not born (in truth, if they studied the life of Jesus rather than the legend, they probably would not celebrate him at all—much historically accurate data is available about Jesus' history that is contradictory to the myth he has been exalted to). People are herded to celebrate whatever they are told is popular to celebrate (Sweetest Day being an excellent example), when they are told to celebrate it (Thanksgiving—always the fourth Thursday of November). There is also a distinction between what one is celebrating and the illusion of what is being celebrated. Christmas and birthdays are an example of this. By celebrating my birthday, it seems I am celebrating the day I was born—my entrance to the world—that I am still here, but if I look deeper and begin asking unrelenting questions, the illusion fades and something other emerges. Think back to basic Physics—the law of motion observed and acknowledged by Sir Isaac Newton, "For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction". This is a glimpse of the machinery behind the universe, part of the underpinning mechanics that run Everything. Celebrating a birthday is an action. Therefore, when I celebrate my "birth" day I must, by default, create acknowledgment of the equal and opposing force—my "death" day. By celebrating my so-called "youth", I am granting credence to my so-called "age" and aging. Socially, the people-sheep are groomed to make fun of aging. "Over the Hill" parties and endless senior citizen jokes abound as birthdays advance. The nescient sheep are trained to envy youth and look back at it longingly as something lost. The celebration of birthdays is actually a celebration of the fear of death, which itself is a conundrum because there is no proof of death—just the decided illusion of dying, but the sheep have been taught to believe they die, so they believe it, unquestioningly. In truth, I am more physically and mentally youthful now, in 2008, than I was even in my early teens. Of course, this is because I run the machine of my body better now than I did then—I run more efficiently and with better fuel by adopting an educated vegan diet and being disciplined with regular exercise. My body will eventually run out of motive power, by virtue of it being a machine, but I will not "die" as such. I am matter and energy; I will become other matter and energy. When there is a fire in my fireplace, I watch the wood burn and transform into embers, ashes, and smoke—it stops being wood, but does it die? Why should I believe in death, when logic dictates there is no death? The machinery of my body, of course, will eventually stop moving, but as Sir Isaac Newton said, "For every action…"
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Recapitulation
For God to exist, God must have an identity. Therefore, if God is identifiable, God exists (I can only identify that which exists—no one can identify something that does not exist). If God exists, then God must conform to the rules of Reality. Everything that exists can only exist within the logical machinery of Existence. I know this because I am never a telephone pole and stars are never marshmallows. There is a brilliantly simple question that illustrates this point and clarifies the error of any Man-made concept of God. The question is this: Can God create a rock even God can not lift? Man created the concept of God as omniscient (knowing everything) and omnipotent (able to do anything). The answer to the question clearly and simply refutes God as omnipotent. If the answer is "yes", then God is not omnipotent (because God can not lift the rock). If the answer is "no", then God is not omnipotent (because God can not do something—He can not create a rock He is unable to lift). Man's concept of God is its own contradiction, and proof of Man's conscious ignorance of reason. Man made up an abstraction and identified it as God, yet if God is not omnipotent—if God does not conform to the identity of God, then God can not be God. Therefore, by this concept, God can not be identifiable—God can not have an identity, meaning God does not exist as Man declares. Reality dictates there is not an all-seeing, all-knowing, all-doing magical being watching over me and judging my deeds. There never was God. God was the wrong answer (except to the true underlying question of, "How can I get away with it?"). Religion feeds and spreads like a pandemic virus, the catalyst of which is ignorance of basic axioms. There is a rational and apparent structure to what is called "life", but within that structure, there is no room for an unreasonable Creator. Man has collectively created and projected his image onto an ideal of God(s) created in the imagination of men and used as a method to induce conformity and hold power over other men. There is no ruling God(s)—just or unjust—and there is no ruling Anti-God(s). There are indisputable rules for living in reality—Aristotle's Law of Identity shows us this—and all of reality operates within these rules; there are no exceptions. By applying reason to basic tenets of my lifestyle, I can see inherent faults in beliefs accepted without full and proper consideration. Many people accept at face-value popular or traditional concepts, and worse, by actively ignoring reality, they foster and perpetuate flawed mystical precepts. These same nescient people embrace religion as key to releasing them from responsibility and accountability for their own physical, moral, and spiritual efficacy.
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Endoepisteme: The Philosophy To live a rational life, I must live in Reality. I must accept Reality is Real. Reality exists in logical, immutable terms in adherence to logical, immutable rules, and it does not exist any other way. There is no common ground between rational thinking and faith that supernatural powers control human destiny. Religion can not co-exist with a logical, reality-based Philosophy.
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—MANUAL application— How do I apply the principles and philosophy of Chapter One to my life? 1. I recognize that I did not have a single thought, feeling, or viewpoint that was my own. Using as my base premise A is A, I continue to identify and deconstruct moral philosophies, ideas, and "facts" which I have heretofore been trained to accept as real and immutable. I accept only what I can judge logically and eliminate contradiction within my set of judgments as I expand my knowledge and my philosophy. 2. I accept that all reality acts within the same set of rules as me, without exception. I recognize I never wake to find I am a fountain pen or wheelbarrow, and I never spontaneously erupt into cabbage (thankfully). 3. I am responsible and accountable for my life and all things in it, and there is no one and nothing that can absolve me of my living. My success as a human being is commensurate to my comprehension of, and ability to work within, the determined logic of Reality. There are rational answers to my questions within the contextual limits of what is real.
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| …In the next chapter, I work to remove the many veils of illusion I was trained to believe about the abstraction called death—as the unequivocal end to life. Logic dictates otherwise.
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2. DEATH
The illusion of an absolute, unequivocal end to Life is the grossest fallacy I ever accepted. Death is a myth perpetuated by those who knowingly or unknowingly prey on ignorance and fear, and who are knowingly or unknowingly ignorant and fearful. Perhaps because of its pervasiveness in society, I believed the myth, though proof has never been offered to validate death as the end to life. There is no death—and further, there is a rational path to illustrate the faulted logic of such an irrational concept (I find a certain irony, by the way, in people who believe in a benevolent, omniscient, omnipotent God, and also believe that such a benevolent Creator should condemn everyone, everywhere, without exception, ultimately to their death…) Man has, in this area, exempted himself from the rules governing the rest of the Universe. Many people, like audience members of a deft illusionist, believe what they see—someone dies—and ignore the sleight of hand behind the trick—I, like everything else, am nothing more than Matter and Energy, and in "life" and "death" I act as energy and matter always do. I transform. —Star Power— To understand the illusion of Death, I had to first understand the origin of Life. The secret is in the stars. Stars have burned since the beginning of the universe—roughly 13 billion years ago by current estimates—far longer than there have been humans. The sun is a middle-aged (at about 4.6 billion years), fairly average star shining in our galactic backyard. Even as such, it is an amazing testament of creation; the dazzling light it emits not only gives life (in the forms of heat and vitamin E, for example), but also defies the existence of an end to life. Following this paragraph is a picture of the Periodic Chart—an arrangement of all known elements, organized by chemical and atomic properties. Within these elements are the basic constituents for life.
(http://www.can-do.com) A basic understanding of the Periodic Table is relevant to understanding the cycles of stars, which itself is important to understanding where life ultimately comes from, and where it goes. —Cloud City— Space is big…and mostly empty (thus, the name), even considering the millions of galaxies discovered, and within this mostly empty space, there are occasional patches of gas, called Nebulae, misty remnants of the originating event (or “Big Bang”, if you prefer) that began the known universe. Nebulae are made mostly of Hydrogen (H, the first element in the Periodic Chart, on the upper left), some helium (He, upper right), and a little of everything else on the chart. When astronomers study stars, they determine their age by plotting brightness and temperature on a Hertzsprung-Russell (“H-R”) diagram (pictured following this paragraph). Astronomers have scoured the skies, but it turns out, never find groups of stars older than about 10 billion years, one of many indicators pointing to a definitive origin of the Universe.
On the diagram, notice most stars burn within certain parameters, forming a line from the lower right to the upper left (this pattern is known as the "Main Sequence"). As a star reaches the end of its Main Sequence cycle, it exhausts most of its remaining energy in a giant explosion, a “Supernova”. When there is a supernova event, a shockwave rushes away from the star (not unlike ripples expand from a rock tossed into a pond). As the shockwaves travel through space, they rush into nebulae, pushing the gases together, causing the gases to swirl and compress into smaller, denser clouds. As the gas clouds become bigger and heavier, the increased density leads to gravitational attraction. From there, the process feeds on itself—the more mass an object gains, the more gravity it has. As gases compress, the center warms from the gravitational friction, eventually forming proto-stars (“pre”-stars). —Mounting Pressure— Gravity continues building pressure in these condensed gas clouds and the temperature rises until the hydrogen reaches (roughly) a million degrees, causing a fusion reaction at the proto-star’s core. This Hydrogen Fusion reaction happens when protons are slammed together with so much energy they fuse to one another, releasing even more energy with the impact. Gravity keeps building, but the intensity of the fusion reaction is so powerful it fights gravity back. If the proto-star gains too much mass, it becomes too big to contain itself. In other words, the pressure beats the gravity; it may split into two stars. If the proto-star does not gain enough mass, there will not be sufficient gravity to raise the temperature to the million-degree threshold needed for a hydrogen fusion reaction; the gravity beats the pressure—a star will not form. However, if a state of stability is reached, the star attains “Hydrostatic Equilibrium” (that is, the fusion reaction does not exceed the pull of gravity and gravity does not overcome the fusion reaction); then, we say, a star is born. As Hydrogen Fusion occurs, Helium is produced (notice again that Hydrogen is number 1 and Helium is number 2 on the Periodic Chart). Eventually, a star will use all of its hydrogen, leaving only the helium to burn. Since there is now less energy to burn (all of the Hydrogen now being gone), the core decreases (with less energy, there is less pressure to keep gravity away; now gravity is winning again). As gravity condenses the core, the core generates heat. —Star Children— If the temperature of the core reaches 50 to 100 million degrees, Helium Fusion begins, causing the tremendous pressure once more to beat gravity. As Helium Fusion increases, the star produces more elements, and continues burning through them: Beryllium, Carbon, Oxygen, Lithium, Boron, Nitrogen, etc… all the way down to Iron, on the Periodic Chart. A star can not fuse past Iron because to do so requires more energy than it has already expended. After a star has depleted its remaining energy, leaving only the iron core, it uses its last resource to survive: Gravity itself. As the star shrinks, it becomes hotter and smaller (and thus dimmer, moving left, and down, on the H-R Diagram), ultimately becoming a White Dwarf. White Dwarfs are so dense the very atoms that make them collapse, forming a new state of matter (Degenerate Matter—at this point, iron can no longer be created by liberating energy, but rather by absorbing energy). An extraordinarily massive star will reach a pressure point where the atoms collapse in a fraction of a second—when this happens, we say a white dwarf goes supernova. This massive explosion raises the temperature to billions of degrees—manufacturing so much energy the star produces the rest of the remaining elements, completing the Periodic Table. So much energy is produced so quickly the star explodes from the center out, allowing the elements to escape. As these heavy elements are thrown into space, and comprise the very substances I am made of, it can be said in the most literal sense, I am truly a Star Child. Humans are Carbon-based; water is composed of Hydrogen and Oxygen. Blood will turn red when the Oxygen outside of my body mixes with the Iron inside of me…everything comes from elements born of stars. —Star Light, Star Bright— As I stare into space, I am bombarded with the energy of light, which scientists call “electromagnetic radiation”. There are many types of electromagnetic radiation. Some of it is optical; that is, I see it with my eyes. In fact, everything I see with my unaided eyes gives off electromagnetic radiation in what is called the "visible spectrum", including myself. There are wavelengths of radiation I can not see with the naked eye, outside of the visible spectrum: radio, infrared, ultraviolet, x-rays, and gamma rays, for example. Anything that is observed gives off energy at one of these wavelengths, from the largest galaxy, to microscopic organisms, from the sky to my skin. I perceive optical/visible radiation in the form of colors, from Red (longer, slower wavelengths) to Violet (faster, shorter wavelengths). I experience other wavelengths without sight. Infrared, for example, I sense as heat. I can not see my body heat, but if I look through Infrared goggles, I can clearly observe objects, even at night, by seeing the differences in their temperature—the infrared wavelengths. —Red is not Red— When I look at a “red” object, like an apple, what I actually see is the wavelength reflected from that object; all other wavelengths are absorbed or pass through it. In that sense, I could say a “red” object is actually every color except “red”, which is the wavelength reflected back in the form of visible electromagnetic radiation. A “green” object, therefore, absorbs all wavelengths except yellow and blue, which is reflected back to my eyes (yellow and blue together create green). A banana looks yellow because all colors except red and green are absorbed. I see “white” when all wavelengths of visible light are reflected and “black” when all wavelengths are absorbed. Therefore, "white" is actually the absence of all colors and "black" is the presence of all colors. Children learn this quickly, by experimenting with crayons. When a child colors over a yellow crayon with a blue one, the ensuing mixed color is green. When all colors in the crayon box are mixed, the hodge-podge of color becomes a waxy black. As molecules absorb wavelengths of light, their energy increases—this is why on a hot day, the surface of a white car remains cooler (reflecting all wavelengths of colors) than the surface of a black car (absorbing all colors/wavelengths). Even my skin glows with visible-light wavelengths (if it did not, I would not be able to see myself or others—at least, not with my eyes). This is not really surprising. After all, I am made of the same elements as the stars; I glow with light as the stars do (although luckily, I do not glow through the same process of Hydrogen Fusion). —How Fast is Your Favorite Color?— By measuring wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation, I can determine how fast an object is moving and whether it is heading toward or away from me. This is known as the "Doppler Effect". The easiest way to describe the Doppler Effect is to first consider the way it works with sound waves. I think of how a fire truck siren sounds as it approaches me, and then as it passes by. As the truck gets closer, the space between my ear and the sound waves from the siren shrinks; the sound waves are forced closer together (thus the waves are pushed toward the blue end of the electromagnetic spectrum). I hear the siren picking up in pitch. As it passes, the space between me and the siren grows and so does the space between the sound waves. I hear the siren fade into the distance (the waves are now red-shifted). Light works the same; when I look into space, I can measure the visible light wavelengths of objects such as galaxies to determine if they are coming toward me (blue-shifted) or moving away (red-shifted), and the speed at which they are moving. This is important because by measuring the speed of an object relative to me, I can also determine its distance from me. For example, I know our nearest galactic neighbor, the Andromeda Galaxy, is about 2.5 million light years away. That means if I left the Andromeda Galaxy today, traveling 186,000 miles per second (roughly the speed of light), I would not arrive on Earth for another 2.5 million years! That also means on Earth, no one would see me leave until 2.5 million years from now, because it would take the light wavelengths from my departure 2.5 million years to reach their eyes. Traveling at the speed of light, no one would see me leave Andromeda until the day I arrived on Earth. Everything I see happening in the Andromeda Galaxy today actually took place 2.5 million years ago! In fact, the sun is about 93 million miles from Earth. It takes the light from the sun nearly 8 minutes of traveling across space to reach my eyes. Therefore, I am always seeing the sun as it looked about 8 minutes ago. If the sun suddenly stopped shining, I would not know until about 8 minutes later (well, not quite; I would likely see a ring of expanding darkness as the last light left the disc of the star). By contrast, light from the moon takes only 1.5 seconds to reach my eyes. This is because the moon is significantly closer and the light has less distance to travel. When I look at a person standing five feet away, I am actually seeing them as they appeared about a nanosecond ago—that is how long it takes the light from their body to reach my eyes. —Light Shines— Returning to the galactic scale, if Andromeda is the Milky Way's closest neighboring galaxy, and it takes light from Andromeda a couple million years to reach me, then how big is the universe? In any practical (or impractical) term, it is infinite—no matter how big I can imagine it, it is bigger. The size of the universe is beyond the comprehension of Man. I may believe I possess a rudimentary understanding of how big it is, but I can not actually imagine the size of the universe any more than I can actually imagine a trillion dollars, or all the drops of water in all the oceans. Given such scope, and understanding Earth, then, is smaller than a dot (.) in my own galaxy, and that my galaxy is not even a speck among the 100 billion or so known galaxies strewn throughout space, I can easily infer that, for all practical purposes, light shines forever.
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Recapitulation
I have offered no new information here—in fact, in this chapter I have only used long-standing facts learned in basic Astronomy and Physical Science classes, so how does this fundamental information disprove the standard superstitious view of death? From here, it is a matter of logic:
1) Stars existed long before we did. 2) Stars shine, sending Light into the universe. 3) Stars provided the constituent parts of matter I am made from; I am made of the same elements as Stars. 4) As a literal being of light, I too, shine and send light into the universe. 5) The universe is infinite. This means my life—my light—shines eternally, forever broadcasting my existence into the Universe.
I give off light the same way an apple does. That light travels into the universe, traveling forever in every direction. My entire life, everything I do, every action I take, is in a sense recorded and broadcast forever. As proof of that, I look no further than the Andromeda Galaxy—what I see there today happened over 2 million years ago. If a baby was born in Andromeda 2.5 million years ago, I could see him take his first breath today—his entire life would replay for me, just as he lived it then. If there is life in other galaxies, they could see me sitting at my desk typing this sentence at the moment my light reaches them—long after my body-machine has expired. Perhaps to inhabitants of Andromeda (if there are any), dinosaurs rule Earth at this moment. People grieve for those they believe have passed away ("passed away"—an interesting term, as opposed to, say, “shine on”). I find solace in understanding my loved ones never "die". They are as infinite as stars; their light shines into the universe forever, as does mine. I have considered that every time I mistreat someone, that moment lives in the universe forever as well. Every time I say one thing and do another, every private moment where some secret disgusting thing is brought to light (if you will pardon the pun), every single time I act in a way that is not aligned with what makes me happy, everything I do shines eternally. I am blessed or doomed to repeat all the good and all the bad in my life until the end of time, until the end of the universe. When conscious of this knowledge, I ask myself the same question every stereotypical parent asks every stereotypical teen, hoping the child will gain wisdom and act responsibly:
Now that you know the truth…what are you going to do with the rest of your life?
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Endoepisteme: The Philosophy
There is no death. Death is a single word definition of the phrase, "Fear of the unknown". When the mysticism behind an "end to life" is unveiled, the illogical premise of death leads to control and manipulation of fear through mystical and ritualistic intimidation. Fundamental understanding of the universe and its governing laws lead to a proper perception of infinity and eternal light—the antithesis of death. Life must have a logical premise. This is true by nature of clearly defined laws to Reality that are indisputably adhered to, regardless of intent, will, or wish. If the premise of life is not endo-epistemic, it is inherently determined by manipulation of fear.
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—MANUAL application—
How do I apply these principles to my life? 1. I inquire of myself. What knowledge do I have of death? All I have seen is the human machine, like every machine, follows the law of entropy and eventually runs out of motive power to sustain itself. 2. Given there is no logical premise to support a theistic religion, I know there is thus no secret or convenient "after-life" to console me for grievances I cause to others, or to allow me another chance to live beyond the consequences of this—my only life. 3. I choose my destiny and accept responsibility for my choices. If there are regrets, then there are regrets and I must deal with them in whichever way I choose to live with them, or beyond them. 4. I look beyond the illusion of a mystical life. All life is logical—there are boundaries to how the machinery operates. I may never understand the whole of the machine, but once I understand the philosophy behind the machinery, I remove the illusion of mysticism. I begin, instead, to see the logic of the mechanism, and then I can apply the knowledge to my own rational living.
In the next chapter, I will consider another common misconception I, until now, accepted without question. |