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skitch
Gym climber
Bend Or
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Topic Author's Original Post - Sep 1, 2015 - 09:13am PT
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In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And an outstanding reason for choosing some sort of God or spiritual-type thing to worship — be it J.C. or Allah, be it Yahweh or the Wiccan mother-goddess or the Four Noble Truths or some infrangible set of ethical principles — is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things — if they are where you tap real meaning in life — then you will never have enough. Never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly, and when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally plant you. On one level, we all know this stuff already — it's been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, bromides, epigrams, parables: the skeleton of every great story. The trick is keeping the truth up-front in daily consciousness. Worship power — you will feel weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to keep the fear at bay. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart — you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. And so on.
Look, the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they're evil or sinful; it is that they are unconscious. They are default-settings. They're the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that's what you're doing. And the world will not discourage you from operating on your default-settings, because the world of men and money and power hums along quite nicely on the fuel of fear and contempt and frustration and craving and the worship of self. Our own present culture has harnessed these forces in ways that have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom. The
freedom to be lords of our own tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the
center of all creation. This kind of freedom has much to recommend it. But of course there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talked about in the great outside world of winning and achieving and displaying. The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day. That is real freedom. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default-setting, the “rat race” — the constant gnawing sense of having had and lost some infinite thing. I know that this stuff probably doesn't sound fun and breezy or grandly inspirational. What it is, so far as I can see, is the truth with a whole lot of rhetorical bullshit pared away. Obviously, you can think of it whatever you wish. But please don't dismiss it as some finger-wagging Dr. Laura sermon. None of this is about morality, or religion, or dogma, or big fancy questions of life after death. The capital-T truth is about life before death. It is about making it to 30, or maybe 50, without wanting to shoot yourself in the head. It is about simple awareness — awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, that we have to keep reminding ourselves, over and over: “This is water, this is water.”
It is unimaginably hard to do this, to stay conscious and alive, day in and day out.
By David Foster Wallace from This is Water
http://www.metastatic.org/text/This%20is%20Water.pdf
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And an outstanding reason for choosing some sort of God or spiritual-type thing to worship — be it J.C. or Allah, be it Yahweh or the Wiccan mother-goddess or the Four Noble Truths or some infrangible set of ethical principles — is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive.
An intellectual rehash of the old aphorism: "there are no atheists in foxholes" and the affection for the idea isn't particularly surprising from someone who battled severe depression.
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skitch
Gym climber
Bend Or
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Topic Author's Reply - Sep 1, 2015 - 09:25am PT
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That's not really what I got out of it, how I would summarize it is:
We all worship some form of ourselves that we want to the world to be impressed by (whether that be intelligence, sexiness, power, athleticism, toughness. . .) and that all of that will let us down because we can never be as good as we would like to be. . .we are worshiping something, we are turning something into our god. . .and that will always let us down. That is why we need to attempt to find something outside of our own selfishness to "worship" or to value. . .
But that is my own interpretation.
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WBraun
climber
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You can't even begin to be an atheist without God.
Thus the atheist is never very intelligent to begin with.
They are stuck like glue to the gross physical material realm only, and thus have no clue whatsoever of the subtle material and what to speak of the spiritual realms.
And yes I completely understand the grist of your posts ......
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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I get the idea of the perils of deriving one's identity from externalities, but having grown up with someone battling severe depression I more key off his "eaten alive" conclusion. It's a difficult disease in that pretty much no matter where you turn it can always be staring you in the face and at least some bouts with it are generally unavoidable over time.
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Jaybro
Social climber
Wolf City, Wyoming
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Old news. I sill don't buy it, and the argument still doesn't stand up unless you share the promotors' need for belief and worship.
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skitch
Gym climber
Bend Or
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Topic Author's Reply - Sep 1, 2015 - 10:47am PT
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Raise your hand if you read more than the first 2 sentences. . .no hands???
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Yep.
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clinker
Trad climber
Santa Cruz, California
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I believe but require proof.
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Jaybro
Social climber
Wolf City, Wyoming
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Why do the desperate resort to scolding when no one agrees with them? Is that really going to change anyone's mind?
Topic Author's Reply - Sep 1, 2015 - 10:47am PT
Raise your hand if you read more than the first 2 sentences. . .no hands???
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The Chief
climber
Lurkerville east of Goldenville
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Outside earth's atmosphere and humanity, that thang does not exist.
Oh, and what it supposedly measures, it is all in YOUR mind.
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WBraun
climber
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Locker -- "NO ONE LIVING KNOWS"
That means they're all dead walking corpses .....
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The Chief
climber
Lurkerville east of Goldenville
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It represents TIME and I suspect that it does in fact exist outside of our atmosphere...
Impossible Locker.... Know any humans and their dumbass ego based concepts outside of the earth's atmosphere?
If you believe that "time" exists outside the human mind, then you believe in the Bible and all them other human concepts of .... "things" as humans think it should be.
Cus them things did not just happen and bolt of lightning hit some dude in the ass way back when and inspired him to believe in.. Time. Of course according to them "Concepts" you think exist outside the earth's atmosphere.
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Mark Force
Trad climber
Ashland, Oregon
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Ideas that I have been working with incorporating lately...
"I can't account for people's beliefs; I can only account for how they show up."
~ anon
"My religion is compassion."
~Dalai Lama
I'm working on making my default mode compassion. Seems like some other guy said basically the same thing (see Mark 12:31).
"Show up and be useful."
~ anon
Seems like a good standard for behavior.
"It is vain to do with more that which can be done with less."
~ John of Occam
Food for thought.....
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The Chief
climber
Lurkerville east of Goldenville
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Just cus you Locker believe it does not mean it exists outside the earths atmosphere/humans mind.
Tell me this Locker, before humans gained a level of mind to conceive "time", who and what kept it? How bout I make this really simple for you. Before humans came to be, who and what kept "time", Locker?
You choose to believe what you wish to. Doesn't mean it's real.
PS: I choose to believe neither the bible nor that time exists outside the human mind.
I also choose to believe you Locker are a straight up buffoon clownbag. Does that make it so?
EDIT: Seriously appears that "Time" is your religion. IMO, believing in such is far worse than believing in the ... Bible.
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donini
Trad climber
Ouray, Colorado
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Couldn't agree.....LESS.
Edit: I'll qualify my post. In the first paragraph there is a dogmatic, blanket statement that there is no such thing as atheism and that everybody worships. I'm an atheist and I don't worship but I don't proselytize and I understand that many people have belief systems dear to them....at that's fine with me.
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MisterE
Gym climber
Being In Sierra Happy Of Place
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I like the OP post - it seems true and succinct.
Thanks, Skitch.
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Mark Force
Trad climber
Ashland, Oregon
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Skitch, Thanks for the OP. Fantastic stuff. Spent some time digest it and, for me anyway and FWIW, this seems to be the diamond heart of it.
The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day. That is real freedom.
That is amazingly good sh#t and actionable. Hard, but actionable. A gem; a keeper. Thank you.
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rmuir
Social climber
From the Time Before the Rocks Cooled.
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If you believe that "time" exists outside the human mind, then you believe in the Bible and all them other human concepts of .... "things" as humans think it should be.
Arrow of time, arrow of time…https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy_(arrow_of_time)
Just because I believe in entropy (which exists independent of the human mind), it doesn't imply that I gotta believe in your bible—or many other of your purportedly weak concepts of "things." Your statement is today's highpoint of lamearity.
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MisterE
Gym climber
Being In Sierra Happy Of Place
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Right on Mark - glad I wasn't the only one.
That freedom is an openness, a receptive ability that many of our heroes had: Ghandi, Jesus, Siddhartha.
Bah, the world is so reactive these days - the gems of consideration are lost.
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