Thursday, March 31, 2011

Justifying my existence (or my blog's, anyway)

This is not my first stab at blogging. I've done others before, but I've always strayed from the intended topic and eventually let them kind of wither away. So why start a new blog? Simple: I intend this one to cover areas into which I have strayed in previous ones. I am also giving myself a wider set of constraints. Rather than trying to create a blog about, say, music composition, I intend this one to cover a broad range of topics, the common thread being an examination of the human condition. Beyond all else, this has always been my central interest, expressed in music, writing, or other forms.

I intend to write about any and all aspects of life, the universe, and everything, as ideas shoot their way through my cortex. I hope to gain some insight into my own existence in the process. I do not intend this to be some sort of personal diary or confessional. While I will naturally gravitate toward topics close to my heart, and surely I will use examples from my life and draw from its events, this blog will be neither a biography nor some sort of myopic rant about my own life. I've done those before, and they are deeply unsatisfying. I like to mix intellectual depth with humor, which I believe to be a key ingredient to successful existence, and I do not shy away from disturbing or controversial subjects. I make no bones about my preference for heady, cerebral topics, but I am never intentionally condescending.

Ideally, there will be conversation. I welcome comments (including dissenting views) - I only ask that commenters maintain a respect for the content of the blog and the other people here. If you don't like me or my writing, don't read it. Please just don't be a jerk here.

I am writing all this as if there is someone out there reading it, when I know that I have not yet even told anyone about this blog yet. But hopefully someone out there will eventually read this. If that's you, welcome. I hope something here moves you and that you join the conversation if you are so compelled.

First!

Welcome to my house. Please, take a seat. The sofa is quite comfortable. Would you like something to drink? A bite to eat? There you go.

Now that you're settled in, let me tell you a story.


Our tale begins with a boy. It is 1983 and he is in third grade, sitting at his school desk, wearing the blue shirt and clip-on tie mandated by the school, which is Catholic and headed by an obese nun with piercing eyes. On his desk before him lies an open book - a religion book, large and thin and floppy, with reproduced watercolor depictions of various Bible scenes. He is learning about the saints, looking at an artist's rendering of St. Stephen.

At that precise moment, a thought worms its way out from the recesses of his developing mind and into his consciousness. It is a thought he does not know how to acknowledge right away, and it comes in the form of a simple yet crucial question: "How do they know all of this?" He does not know the answer

And so, for the first time in his young life, the seed of doubt has been planted. Although his family is not particularly religious, he has been raised to believe in God and Jesus and all the dogma of the Catholic Church as fully as be believes in the sun and the moon. He is aware that his Jewish friends have different beliefs and that there are many religions, but being eight years old, he has never given much thought to such things. Until now.

One day he asks his teacher how we know the stories of the Bible are true. She responds with a level of agitation disproportionate to the question that the Bible is the inerrant word of God. He is too shy and too intimidated to continue with the next obvious question: "How do you know that?" He simply thinks it to himself.

Over the years, he asks the question again and again, bringing it to a variety of authority figures. None of their answers set his mind at ease until he asks a Jesuit priest in his high school. The priest explains that we do not know any of it. We believe it; we have faith. However, the priest points out, we do not know anything. Everything we know is based, to some degree or other, on belief.

This opens the boy's eyes in ways likely unintended by the priest. The boy begins to develop a personal philosophy with the intent of determining which things should be believed or disbelieved. He wants to come up with some kind of set of criteria for himself. Why believe in the Catholic God and not the Greek gods? Why Jesus and not Muhammad or the Buddha? Each question leads to a plethora of new questions.

He leaves religion behind, no longer able to justify believing in one or another faith. He constantly challenges his own thoughts and comes to new conclusions, many of which he will later reject based upon further consideration.

In adulthood, he finally reaches a level of comfort with his own beliefs and viewpoints. He achieves a sense of clarity previously unknown to him. While he acknowledges that he does not and cannot ever have all the answers, and that nothing is truly knowable, he comes to the conclusion that he now knows how to ask the questions in more meaningful ways.


This is my (rather abridged) personal story of how I began my intellectual journey to where I am today. There is much more to it, of course, but I think the essential epistemological questions that came to me as a confused child opened the path to a sort of enlightenment for me down the line. I would say that most of my growth comes from learning to accept the unanswerability of some questions rather than in finding the answers to them. I believe that however strongly you may believe in something, it is best to always keep in mind that you may be wrong. Much of the pain in the world today seems to be caused not by a particular religion or belief system, but by  rigid adherence to a system. We should keep in mind that all ultimate truths are unknowable, and we all simply have opinions about how best to live.