I have a word consistent of 95% pure magiqe for you (think before continuing here, because it might lay eggs in your mind, and it’s offspring is hungry). It’s called contingency. Contingency. It’s the smartest word in recorded history, and if you want to be smart you adopt it’s spawning brood. It signifies something that could be differently or didn’t have to exist at all. I’m quite positive that I’m contingent, as hard a time I have imagining a world without me. The DUF is contingent, the idea of honor or money or yellowness, the last 200 years, and so on. The only thing imaginable NOT contingent, NOT imaginably differently or as not existing at all, is contingency itself. So, as tempting it sounds, not to believe in anything, that itself is a random value: You cannot prove to me that it’s smart or nice not to. You can just have a certain amount of conviction. Same problem with your preachers: None can point out why the distinction between right or wrong is a ‘good’ distinction itself. Maybe it’s an evil one. So you’d need another observer who judges, say a god with an elephant head, but what makes his actions right? At one point you just have to claim that it would be nice if he was there, doing what he does, the elephant head. I’m not arguing for less religion here, I’m arguing for smart and sexy ones.
I don’t think I’m more honest or truthful here, because I have no outside ground from which to point at that distinction as a ‘good one’, either. I can claim that I should devour meat, not because it’s right, but because I like it. And I believe firmly that all arguments against that are just words you made up. On the other hand, I believe that it’s cool to treat people with a certain amount of respect and don’t, say, delete their hard drive memories. I made that guideline up, cause we HAVE to believe something, at some point. There’s no determination about rightness here, I just adopted a few things I catched up in childhood TV-shows, some stuff this uncle of mine said which I quite liked. I tingled around with it and forged something completely random, called my moral system. But since it’s mine, I like to think it’s a quite sophisticated, over-complex, yet slick and generally a sexy moral system. I spawned the bastard, I made it up, so it’s the most truthful thing I’ll ever encounter – until I can think of an even better one. I like to believe in a world where all of you are forced to do the same. That could be called responsibility, if you wish.
You see what I’m doing: I’m pretending to give reasons, that my world is a more desirable one than your priest’s. But in actuality I’m not arguing at all. I’m trying to impress you with my liberal yet upright lifestyle. Whilst you, prophet – and that is what makes me angry sometimes – have no faith to offer that amazes and astonishes me, that conquers my heart, my fantasies and my weird poetic romanticism. If you are here to talk to me about faith, why can’t I see a single thing to believe in here?! By all means, disagree with me. I believe with all my heart that my values are completely contingent! And: that this is GOOD!
That’s what I should have said. One of those times. Not listen to my music in this horrible, disrespectul way I did. And write my way out of it afterwards, to justify myself.
One of those times.
I’ll visit my very own Highpriest and talk about it.
Faith is that girlfriend that’s never faithful if you slow down.
Who here is Fiction?
Baruch Caan