What is it to be alive?

What is it like to be alive? A creature of thought on another planet existing in another kind of reality might ask this. The definition of life is what then? What would we answer if we were asked the question. The current definition is that “organisms maintain homeostasis, are composed of cells, undergo metabolism, can grow, adapt to their environment, respond to stimuli, and reproduce.” When these functions cease to operate we know and are grimly aware that we and all life then dies.

 

The self-sustaining processes that guide us living beings in existence are very unusual and mysterious to consider. Do any of these more sophisticated processes effecting humanity matter? We human beings might wonder in our short lived walk through the world if we are engineered for self-sustainment for a larger reason? Why do we want to live on? Isn't it puzzling that we have so much going on in our cultures? We produce such ambitious and interesting creative efforts. We are continually searching and our searches yield big answers. IS it a cruel naivety that shapes our communities of humanity? Is it mere cruelty of nature to have such empty illusions of optimism and hope. When we grapple with the death of our dearest friend and family member and long to find him/her again in the greener pastures of hope what is it really? When we look through the historical lens of an earlier devised system on Earth that guides a faith are we grasping at straws or do these things matter beyond our decomposition.

 

The other various forms of life that exist are plants, animals, fungi, protists, archaea, and bacteria.Is everything in the universe made out of matter? I know life itself is a much more complex form of that matter. Human life itself is a very curious anomaly of this matter indeed. Why does that matter come together just so giving birth to us unusual creatures? Is there a reason beyond random biology for life? Can that possibility of an afterlife really be adequately and reasonably dismissed?

 

Why does life come from non-life and tantalize us thinking creatures the way it does? Life causes us to get caught up in a fever of upward and outward and inward reflection. We aim our sights at truth, at nature, at a being rumored to exist as a God. Through that God we try to strategize our survival communicating then to that God as a transcending idea. Our very own continuation and survival is up against the unknown here as we act.

 

History is full of attempts to define what is meant by existence. Do we living organisms possess a life force caused originally by a vital spark that we’ve not yet began to understand? Is it possible the totality of Earth itself is alive?

 

The way life began on Earth is yet unknown I hear. There are hypotheses that have been formulated about that question. The earliest known life forms are said to be microfossils of bacteria. “In July 2016, scientists reported identifying a set of 355 genes believed to be present in the last universal common ancestor of all living organisms.” To survive in ecosystems this life, that is made up partially of us people, has to adapt to a range of conditions.

 

The philosopher Aristotle was the first person to classify the organisms of life. Eventually after Aristotle new groups and categories of life were then discovered. Cells themselves are now considered the smallest units and building blocks of life.

Extraterrestrial life also remains a possibility as humanity ponders our existences. 

Our Universe

What if there are no answers anywhere to shed light on the uncertainty we grapple with. We search imperfectly by our own science, philosophy and religion for those answers but we rarely say space might contain the truth. Maybe our specific universe contains no answers for us however. Maybe a clue to who we are and an explanation of our destiny or history isn't anywhere within several hundred billion galaxies within our own universe to be discovered.

Remember wer'e reminded each galaxy contains trillions of stars. It's not just a bunch of stars and empty space but also out there, in likeliness, are many unfathomable other discoveries. Out there in our sky these unique phenomenon more likely then not exist there mysteriously to be realized..

 

 The answers to the mysteries of this solar system and our own Earth might be out there. Our true purpose might be kept there in a compellation of records kept of our real history and not just our educated guess at our own history that is bound to be ridden with error. The enormity of non examinable historical reality that we teach ourselves as science could then be traded in for the actual solid truth. 

Creativity out there might be unbounded, unending and diverse wherever out there is. In the way creativity is  unending then maybe the search for a  discovery of phenomenon that will answer our questions is not close. Maybe even our own very Universe has no answers to the questions and need for explanations about us on Earth. Maybe truth is not found nearby at all. Perhaps our biggest  answers to those questions are amid the outer multiverses.

 

The multiverses are universes linked to universes "I think" stringing outward beyond our own universe so I hear. They are attached to one another in an infinitely unique way I think. That’s perhaps where even stranger phenomena exists out there. Questions not posed or conceived might hide somewhere in that infinite chain of enormous Universes beyond. Our truth might hide in the ten trillionth three hundred millionth one or to one of a number so large one could never calculate it.

 

Never in trillions of millenniums however will any searcher approach that truth or even know his/her own solar system let alone galaxy or multiverses in all likelihood. The truth then might lay away hidden and held very secretively by the enormity of forces and powers we'll never nearly fully understand. *POOOOOOF* As I write this suddenly a vaporous gas of unusual elements fills a vacuous void. Stars collide and disintegrate. *KABOOOOOOF* The multiverses have suddenly shifted to make way for the highest of all powers!

 

No wait! For he/she who might have thought a veil was about to be lifted and truth was about to be told he/she has hoped for too much! What is happening around us is still not known so false alarm! Truth is still silent and infinity still hides itself from us transcending the scope of our own limited analyses.

We are apart of what perhaps is an unending truth. We exist perhaps in a place that potentially just keeps going and going and going and going. Deep out there in some unfathomable deep something might be happening this very moment we might surmise. What happens there now is so far removed from our gaze we can’t know that. Maybe a figure like Socrates is explaining time, space, and truth to whoever has ears to hear...

The meaning of our lives

 

 

I find that people have unusual ways of interpreting reality. Back in our

ancient past the distances that social mobility allowed people to traverse

limited natures discovery. There was a lack of awareness how diverse the

oceans were, for instance, while the animal kingdom was just as unfathomed.

Suck knowledge remained nonexistent while mankind set to work writing

down the miracles we supposedly witnessed that were meant to prove there was a God acting in

nature.

 

The authors introduced these fantastical stories involving

staffs being lifted to control snakes, swarms of pestilence killing Gods

disobedient, talking donkeys, and the list of myths go on from there.

 

To the ancient listeners, and the reading audiences since, these accounts

were the truth. To skeptics and outright disbelievers nature doesn't bend the

rules like this. To the skeptics these are old creation tales not

legitimate historical events.

 

I find It odd that atheists, agnostics and Bible literalists seem to miss

something. The literalists take the Bible from cover to cover as meant to be

literally interpreted, not only as an allegory or a divinely inspired

message in how history actually happened.

 

Both the literalists and those who doubt a superior intelligent force of creativity and divinity might however miss appreciating with enough awe the size of the real miracle we're a part of. They may focus attention all of their lives to nature, be atheists, and still miss the point of the grandiosity we're apart of. The literalists may read the old myths and miss realities full genius without them. Human beings tend to have to bend reality in order to have faith in a higher power.

 

We struggle to know that higher power as the poets, mystics, story tellers,

philosophers, playwrights etc., constantly reach for those answers. Their

search for truth moves toward other aspects of reality but God

remains for many an important focus.

 

The religiously inspired writers of the ages wrote the dialogues characters

of stories acted in in their narratives. They built the religious traditions

while caught up in a yearning and searching for truth across the ages.

They might have looked around at creation sitting before the night sky by a

fire in some dessert. They would there have tried to fathom the infinite

abyss of a secretive and guarded sky.

 

In more recent times writers and searchers into life's mystery would have

looked into the underwater world observing a coral reef teeming with a riot

of colorful and interesting marine species. Some of the writers of history

would no doubt have watched the sun setting sitting beside the Serengeti.

 

Before nature we consider ourselves. This perplexing mystery has us now

looking at images of our world from space. We're on a strange object called

a planet in an orbit billions of years old. The pursuers of molecular biology

explore the quantum level of everything. This all takes place as the

crickets sound on a spring night.

 

Reality both fearfully and awesomely confronts us with the miraculous

miracle of existing here amid this all. What is this were apart of? Are we

part of some grand miracle? Those old stories from Bible times can easily be

discounted but yet I'd argue the profound exists interwoven in those pages.

The inspiration of those who sought God and felt compelled to reveal Him

believed what they felt was revealed to them. To them it was God

saying it speaking through them in their searching.

 

Nature is appreciated yes but just how appreciated? Is nature more of a

miracle then we realize? Can we study nature like a naturalist, a poet, a mystic, or

pray before its vistas to an unseen God thanking Him for our birth, our

human experiences and relationships and still not get it? With our unique

consciousness we're able to describe internally to ourselves and externally to each other what

we see. Do we then in these dynamics glimpse a real miracle? Can we trust in

that miracle being behind the meaning and destiny of our lives? Pursuing a

friendship with God while giving a proper awe to what we're apart of in

existence Is indeed worthy of our efforts.

Schizophrenia

A few old friends have conspired to punish me for daring to have a mental illness in their midst. After living with mental illness for twenty-four years for the past eighteen years I've been cut off from socializing almost entirely. I've had to live hibernated away in my house but for family outings. Struggling here with severe anxiety and taking medication to control the effects of schizophrenia these certain old friendships proved to be very disappointing. I really needed someone there and most of the time there was no one. 

It's came to my awareness that I'm not the only one to experience this however. When another old friend lost his son to suicide he then suffered a mental breakdown and resorted for a time to drug use. His mental instability, in spite of his lengthy history and ties to the community, lead to a common conversation encouraged among those old friends. They decided he should be blacklisted. Common consent encouraged avoidance of him and beyond that deprival of self in community are the painful stories of what happened next when he reached out to them. He begged them to take his calls, to go on fishing trips with him or visit him and they blocked his number, hung up on him and refused to talk to him. 

Almost exactly the same decisions have been made quietly about me. I don't want charity or pity. I welcomed one of these "pity visits" a few months ago. The visitors had the nerve to talk to me in a tone of paternal maturity. They mixed this with underhanded remarks and an understanding among themselves of personal success they then expected unfairly I should be able to attain for myself.

A mental illness is debilitating in case you didn't know. The symptoms of schizophrenia are difficult to live with. Social anxiety can be terribly confining. What they don't understand  is I'm ok with the person I am and the person I've become living with mental illness. To try and describe this to them would seem foreign and unwelcome to their commonsense. I am not ashamed of myself however nor concerned with the size of my house and its relevance to my success.

Living through delusions challenged my peace and effected my judgment so many times. My family has seen those struggles. I can't understand the comedic value of mental illness material. I'm sorry maybe I don't have a good enough sense of humor. Struggling through bazar beliefs of fame, notoriety and hidden camera conspiracies I find it hard then to see the hilarity inspired in this common man mental illness humor. It's very humor's for them to point at insanity and say "he's a raging lunatic" or "he's batshit crazy" or "he's a nut job." It really is a mature thing to say. 

Meanwhile I get to experience the delussions and ideas of reference which are ideas that link unrelated comments personally to what's happening in my life. If the remarks can appear negative and humiliating they will and are quite alarming, unsettling and upsetting. Dealing with them on a daily bases is a "legitimate disability." There is stress and worry constantly that  trouble me while I struggle with different kinds of competing versions of reality. Social withdrawal and organizational and motivational problems do effect daily affairs which is why mentally ill people appear disheveled and end up homeless. Laziness has nothing to do with any of it! Being terrified of public spaces and social interaction is more then limiting also. Are these legitimate problems I have?

 Have I overcome any buriers when I've tried to educate myself to go on and rationally attempt to discuss these issues maturely? Should I be ashamed that I struggle with mental illness?  

This is negative few days I've been having. I've been on a rant but there have been people who have been quite kind! I'm not directing this rant at any of the kind people. I do want to send a note to my working class neighbors, well the neighbors who used to live next door and who are still around. They drank liquor in their yards and continuously judged me in their rowdy late night fireside conversations.

 To them I want to say I am not guilty of any of your accusations of whatever drunken judgmental appeal you made with your logic! I am getting by the only way I know how to and I think anyone with serious mental illness deserves their dignity kept in tact period! Thank you anyone who robbed me of friendship for so many years. I put my stake down with you in earlier times and it proved a bad decision to make...

Talking over a person

 

When a few people go to visit a person and talk deceptively to him it involves calculation. In making comments that they only know the true or full meaning of they act strategically attempting to talk over his head. The object of their deception is himself supposedly left in the dark while they in turn show the real insight. Their remarks come at the expense of the feeling of dignity and perceived self importance the oblivious individual they talk over feels. It is an undertaking the other people share as an inclusive pact that hurts him. They no doubt have perfected their craft over the years with him out of earshot.

 

 People in this way delight in strategizing and securing such understandings at another's expense. I guess it makes them feel both powerful and also delight simultaneously in the individuals humiliation. 

In this kind of arrangement with one another the conspirators seem to believe they are the only ones in awareness of the knowledge they delight in possessing and withholding. When in a room together with them the individual might perhaps however see and even recognize the behavior. He or she might see the behavior as crude or unsophisticated but that won't stop the others from the behavior.  

To add to the insult the remarks may even step over another line that even the saboteurs, it might have been thought, were previously thought incapable of crossing. The group might then go about callously arranging the ultimate of humiliations: the physical harm of the individual.  The individual remains "oblivious" to being the object of their high minded intension and no doubt because of that they continue to scheme on. In utter disdain the group acts friendly on one level, the level the individual wants to believe in, while on another level "that they supposedly have mastered" their business is real humiliation of him or her which moves on now to involve potential violence. That the contempt for the individual can go on and even promote an act of violence being carried out is profound. The "oblivious friend" faces real betrayal!  

 Lets step into the world of the "friendship visit." The guests  blurt out the name of the individual who they have before hand strategized as the person up to the job to physically injure him. The name is uttered at several  moments while looks are exchanged. It was peculiar to infer from just that something so callous being planned. The rest of the visit demystified any doubts.  

This drive to humiliate turns people like one of my aunts into people motivated to continuously try to talk over people and bring them down. By seeking I think to secure through her efforts an elevated image for herself she acts this way finding uplift and reassurance.  Cruelty, power, and the diminishment of the other must motivate her instinctively. She somehow convinces herself in the process perhaps that she's a miss marple or the lady from Murder she wrote.  In finding solidarity with a third person she thinks is important enough to be aligned with she then acts strategically to diminish the oblivious someone. This feel good agenda of making an ally at the expense of another this Church attending older woman delights in carrying out. 

What's wrong with visiting an old friend with a mental illness because you like him? Why not learn from going to Church that Jesus was inclusive of the marginalized and represented humility and compassion? I'm not anyone's punching bag by the way.

 

Reality is not clear

What happens If I raise big doubts about Geniuses. Was it’s version the actual observation that tells us how life began. What If I question atheism. Because I doubt Geniuses accuracy must I then embrace an atheistic system that prematurely, I think, says there is no God. When I wonder about realities senseless and awful wars and suggest we human beings are like puppets dancing to influences we can't contain or control am I in danger of punishment for observing reality too honestly. What if I were to deny conventional patriotic rhetoric and instead of loving the nation that is my home above the rest of the world instead dare to love the whole world equally across borders. Then there are moments of honest reflection that I reluctantly question whether we are even in a good universe.

 

I think all of these observances are expressions of free thought. These observations, questions, anxieties can be posed without fear of unfair religious laws forbidding their posting here in Canada. These ideas are expressions of truth seeking.  I get the feeling nonetheless that “some people" are so uncomfortable hearing these ideas that their authoritarian impulses are busy reacting. I think miniature despots exist across borders in human nature in free and oppressive countries alike. To these miniature minds, in their sensitivity to honest questioning, they may be trying to come up with ways to silence me or even punish me for my contemplation. Why would they have this authoritarian like impulse to stifle the questions or truths that confront humanity.

 

This raises another point I’d like to make. Reality has never been clearly observable. The truth has never been obvious or even possible to entirely obtain. In life people need answers to build unique personalities with unique ideas and convictions. People not only aspire to be answerers of big questions but even before that development has barely started people are busy weighing in authoritatively on what the truth is. As a human being grows further, perhaps not even in the truth but in a developed articulated argument of truth, the further their argument goes to convince others the more inclined that individual is to teach others.

 

Yet these are illusions that the world is understood. It’s in human nature to aspire to be an expert. Listen to my words right now I’m aspiring to say something interesting and by doing it be an authority. Truth in this world is uncertain business.

Accepting people

What if a few thousand years ago the writers of the world religious texts of the Old and New Testament had felt inspired to write a very different tradition? Something different might have been written other then a long tradition of characters being supernaturally guided to build an ark, part the red sea, go to the mountain for the ten commandments, be swallowed by a whale, and behead a giant.

 

That different tradition created might have still lead up to the slightly more believable time where nature was still offered a miraculous serious of events. Those miraculous events were when Jesus was born and wise men seen a star and traveled to where He lay in a manger. Jesus then gave the incredible moral teachings that were so challenging and often contradictory to our own instincts and logic. This was a story of all stories and much more then a story I think anyway.

 

Suppose though however, just suppose for consideration sake, that the Christian religion didn't subscribe to the notion of Hell. I realize Christianity is built around Christ's death on the cross. I actually except this sacrifice as something very profound and true and I put my faith in it.

 

Suppose however that instead of Hell emerging as a consequence and Faith in Jesus as being our salvation that another kind of plan had been revealed to us. This alternative plan, for speculation sake, would have been recorded back then and passed along through the ages. This plan could have, might have, lasted scrutiny and wars and ideological shifts in loyalty and personal convictions of people like Christianity had.

 

Suppose this view in a religion was one that taught that there was no Hell but only degrees of good to be realized in the afterlife. Suppose Jesus was instead a path to the greatest of all possible good while alternatively Hitler was an ugly path to the least of all possible goods. Suppose our lives were lived not casually so but with this deeply entrenched in our minds and there was no Hell.

 

What If we were people constantly considering whether we’re good people or not good people with more then just an occasional consciences doubt raising a self-analyses of ourselves. Suppose then we were believers in the good of our lives leading to degrees of reward. Would we have more compassion, more charity, be more willing to forgive the trespasses of others and erase from our needs the retaliation of others that effect us negatively?

 

Jesus taught about compassion and charity and forgiveness of course. Suppose instead of Christianity every instinct we had was acting to work our way into the highest eternal good of the after life we could reach. Would that have been a more motivating system for us to nurture and inherit along through the generations then? Now we have to wrestle with the current system that’s thousands of years strong in the modern era. To those familiar with Jesus I think He’s much more then a "system" or just one of many religions this is all purely supposing something.

 

The problem we face as humanity is finding the truth in ideas. Ideas in civilization are competitive and in modern societies other theories spring up and challenge the legitimacy of truth. Many alternative theories are grounded in the natural and observable world and are based on reason instead of faith. These theories do not point to miraculous events in breaks of reality not witnessed  that are rumored to have miraculous effects. These other theories  are taught in modern Universities. Of course the world in it’s orbit in space is more miraculous then any myth or exaggerated story, as are the oceans, the animal kingdom, the unusual human being and our communities etc..

 

Secular countries produce more secularists then adamant Bible believers. So then because of these facts basically then most of the world is being won over by alternative thought. If only 1/4 of the world was lost to the wrong kind of thought it would be atrocious to think they all were destined to an eternity without God.

 

Unfortunately however given all the different beliefs in the world the number of "dammed" is way larger then 1/4 of the Earth. Can we wrest content at this or if not content can we instead fearfully tremble at Gods wrath acceptingly while knowing this? Do we accept this with our knees quivering to be the plan of our God? Do we just shrug off the people of India or Pakistan or China or Saudi Arabia?

 

The pursuit of being a good person is best left up to God’s plan and not a new religion I think. Belief in Jesus does motivate continuously a person to be a good human being. I was simply trying to imagine if history could have given a different more inclusive embrace of humanity capable of changing the trajectory of wondering minds. There are so many minds that have damaged hearts and live amid the immoral and the illegal. Knowing Jesus I wouldn’t want another system. I just wish people to familiarize themselves with Him.

 

Surrounded by calls to war and reasons to hate other human beings life moves all of us now forward toward our end. Where that end will completely lead all of us who can fully tell. A system of religion is  just a system if not motivated by something that transcends our world. As time progresses we know that world and its struggles for ideas more clearly. Thought should then challenge us to try and be more understanding of that reality.

Paradise

In paradise, provided there is a paradise, which I think there is,  we may reflect on human existence there. We may see our former existence as a hazy journey through a confusing world. We may only then there in Heaven finally know the truth completely. We then would realize that our previous journeys choices and resulting directions were seriously often made in a fog. The fog had affected our sight and obscured our life with faulty calculus.

 

Finally in Heaven we may then in paradise be able to recognize empathetically the inherent error facing all human thought and understanding. There then there would be moral correctness and ideological alignment to the truth. There we’d ultimately find true fulfillment to understand the destiny and hope of mankind.

 

Alternatively that might not be paradise at all however. Paradise might instead be a place where we discover our security comes only by conformity to certain hard found ideas that seem irrationally construed about us while we move on the planet. The ideas claiming the truth on Earth, that had been forced on some, withheld to others, challenged by various theories, and had caught humanity amid many alternative attracting distractions regardless would be what then ultimately mattered. Heaven wouldn’t care or be sympathetic then to our ignorance.

 

Now in this vision of paradise this God might see: cruelty, war, aggression, ideological correctness as the ultimate nature of His. This might then be His only plan of hope for anyone. God then may go about punishing most of humanity by these divine standards. Blowing oneself apart and others with you in mayhem and horror in the name of justice would actually then be Gods true character.

 

We're in a bit of a pickle then us human beings. We’re in a pickle then because God hasn't clearly stated the first option in any religion. That option would be that what awaits us is a paradise that is more fair then we understand in our religious texts as we stumble as human kind through life. Don't get me wrong Jesus is fair in His teachings but the total plan as we now can only see it condems allot of people. 

 

While alternatively were in a pickle because of the second option of what paradise would be. That option continues to attract humanity to acts of extreme violence carried out as Gods will and plan for humanity. For those who think they will visit God one day God then would not be a God of peace in this vision of understanding.

 

What will God say to us about justice and fairness and love then ultimately? Can we trust God to be fair?

Love

If I loved a woman and told her so, regardless what her response was, I would stand by my decision in that I did the right thing. People conspire to step on other peoples deepest feelings too often in this world. That's where the negativity would come from these people.

 If someone loves, or once loved, there is an insidious instinct in people to punish the person if the behavior doesn't align to preconceived assumptions of normal. Those assumptions tend to be very narrow about who should still feel love. Expressing love traverses this statuesque and flys in the face of any kind of mean calculus. Love is always the most valuable expression any human being can dare express.

  If someone humiliates you for loving and laughs at you hold your head up. You probably find yourself at moments like this in a situation where you're not loved back. I'm not advocating stalking the person if they have rejected you. Certain other situations are different from this however. You might be seperated from who you love by other reasons in these situations. If in these circumstances you're mostly sure your love will go unreturned and nonetheless you assert your feelings into the open I'm suggesting you did the right thing and have done nothing wrong!

 

If people want to punish you for being in love, defending love, or believing in love just shrug it off as ignorance by them. It's not an ignorance deserving of verbal punishment perhaps it's just simply that these people are in the dark about loves nature. They may not believe that what overarches all our lives and drives the universe is love.

Going unloved in return is hardly an indicater of you, your worth, or how lovable you really are! If you aren't loved back it's likely the one you think so much of is actually not a great judge of you or allot of things. I say this in a hushed voice to suggest that because of your love and admiration for him or her " that nontheless him or her still may not be a person who's a great guage of character or personality in deciding anything meaningful about you!" In fact most people who get rejected probably really get rejected for very stupid reasons. The ability to know you by the rejecter may seriously be impaired because of their fickle moods, lusts, attitude, concentration, maturity, interests  etc.

You may be rejected, however, some of the time, for signifigant reasons that are all about you. You may have anger issues. You may be negative, nasty, not just to him or her you love but in your general outlook and perspective. Those kinds of negative behaviours are unatractive to allot of people. You may not be interesting in your conversation. You might need to read more, write, develop yourself as a person. The world is competitive but you can do these things. You can compete and be the mature person! That's my two cents on daring to express love.