My philosophy.

I’ve been told many times by many people that I am the strangest atheist they’ve ever met. Why? Because I have beliefs. I consult runes, tarot, and recently have began research into I Ching. Not for divination uses. Rather for the reflective nature of the interpretations they provide. It gives you something to think about. For instance hexagram 32 (duration). Thunder and wind: the image of Duration.Thus the superior man stands firmAnd does not change his direction. Sure, you can apply that to your current situation and infer whatever you like, but it’s more important to reflect on the message and come to understand what it means and how you can become that. What I get from it: To stand in the face of adversary is to demonstrate personal strength. Surely you cannot doubt the truth of that statement.

For me, physical reincarnation is a scientifically proven fact. When we die our bodies decompose, giving our matter to the worms, plants, microbes, etc. Those are in turn given to other larger and more complex forms, birds, foxes, cattle, and eventually to the nursing mother of her child and then to her child. Physically we are scattered into billions of pieces that were us and are now other things. A drawing used to be ink in a pen. That being said, we are the afterlife of something else and that is what we make of it.

Also, we are born and die in each moment of our lives. Physically we are not made of all the same things we were a moment ago, that person is gone and will never be back. Our electrons constantly mingle with electrons and transfer from atom to atom with the surrounding air, the things we touch, what we eat. And those electrons have mingled with countless other atoms giving way to the fact that we are all the same being. Or at least, we are all connected physically.

Mental reincarnation is a bit trickier in that a memetic legacy is left by each of us. Our actions inspire others and our words are taken with others and given to their children. Mannerisms, or even just ideas gathered from others are passed along from person to person along an infection vector. Our cogitation doesn’t transfer, merely the results of it.

If you say that just because something is made up of the atoms of something else doesn’t make it the same thing, true–it has changed and become the second forgetting what it was in the first, which I think we should do. Forget who we were and focus only on who we are. Focus only on now because the past is unchangeable and the future is…non-existent (I’ll get to that.). Choice is an illusion. All choices must be considered as happening in a wave of probability and if they are all there then they aren’t there as choices. The past unchangeable and the "choice" precludes action or thought and is therefore in the past of the action or thought and unchangeable and therefore no longer a choice. The second an action or thought occurs it is. Phil didn’t choose to throw the ball, he threw the ball. If the universe is infinite then mathematically all actions that are possible will occur and therefore the future is nothing more than every possible action ever and our actions are just reflections of our path through this infinite mass.

Purity of thought is admirable. That is, to think is to ruin the action. We are too self aware of our actions and think constantly: What will become of this? In thinking we over analyze and miss chances out of fear. We second guess ourselves and worry about consequences that may or may not happen often crafting elaborate best and worst case scenarios for our actions and limiting ourselves to finite outcomes in an infinite set of possibilities. We see ourselves as weak, or strong, and we limit ourselves by these descriptors.

Simply allowing ourselves to react to situations eliminates stress (at least for me). By making our actions a part of ourselves we achieve purity. We allow ourselves to be whatever the situation calls for. (It’s the difference between D&D and GURPS.) We don’t feel helpless if we don’t allow ourselves to be helpless. Just doing what is natural to the self is the truest form of reward.

Also, the nature of truth can only be determined by the self and for the self. Your truths are not mine, and mine are not yours. Though your truths may inspire me, or mine you; they will never be the same. And your truth will be tested, as mine are. They are not canon and never will be, truth is mutable and relative. If you tell someone a lie and they believe it as truth and tell another, they are not lying, they are conveying incorrect information in a truthful manner. If that person had sought to correct and test the statement there would be no conveying of false truths. The problem is that too many people do not test truth for validity.

The more we attempt to fight something that we cannot influence we expend our energy, our time, and our thoughts wasting them on something that cannot be influenced instead of taking that action’s results and attempting to deal with them (which may or may not be possible, however eventually down the line of un-influence-able events their results will become influence-able). I’m not saying that lack of preparation is the way to go, quite the contrary. The problem lies in being able to discern which events are truly beyond our control.

Everything is in constant flux, and so in order to be able to handle that flux we must too be dynamic. The specialist is inferior to the generalist; yet the specialist is needed.

And yet, where is God in all of this? No where, there is no need for a God, where we came from isn’t important, we’re here. We can’t change anything about our existence so why focus on it?

But all of that is loosing the forest for the trees.

–RK