Rantings of a Mad Man Part XI: Diatribe of a Blind Man

Man is set with his vices, stationary with his opinions and firm in his beliefs. We are a people of ancients. We rather the tried and true (or not so true so long as tried) path than set out and create our own way. Our biases are centuries old and our mindsets older still. Man is still trapped by the mistakes of its past and continues to make them relentlessly into the present. Friendly skies flown the wrong direction are more traveled than stormy ones headed the right.

No one said change was easy. Yet as time passes, man's grasp of certain archaic principles will become increasingly unseemly to those of us who break with tradition and form our own paths.

Religion, marriage, sexuality, superstition, and traditional values akin to these are up for grabs and I'm the merchant. Religion is the pacifier of the masses; it excuses the actions of leaders and trendsetters as they say: "This life is imperfect and must be tolerated. The next life will be great."

The problem remains that this life is imperfect because people look to the next, take the easy way out, and are pacified into complacency.

Marriage and sexuality (the expression and kinds of love) are dictates from religion. The sanctity of marriage. Sexuality is reprehensible and many times abnormal and immoral. These are the guilts brought on by religion. They are means of control, ways to push religion into people's lives. Marriage is a shackle and a safety net, a double-edged blade whose good justifies its bad. This makes it ever tricky. Sexuality is the expression of love. Religion promotes moderation, moderation of love. This diminishment of love is perhaps the greatest crime of all.

Superstition is a queer sort of concept and proves that man is capable of fighting the confines of religion. Superstition conveys the innate belief that there is something extraneous to gods or religious beliefs. This may very well become the fall of monotheistic religion and there upon contemplation, the fall of all religion. Man will notice that superstition will overtake gods and religious belief. It will become clear that nothing changes. The world will not end; we will not become profoundly unlucky; karma will not kick us in the teeth. And there our eyes will open and we will see our views of religion as they have been since prehistoric times a fallacy and a means of control of the meek by the powerful and the dominating.

The men of theses traditional values travel the lighted path and in the wrong direction. I travel the path of darkness, an unknown path on which I do not float but careen. A race in the darkness I plow through picking up as much knowledge as I can as I go. My understanding of this new path is not complete, surely not as yours of the beaten path. But my knowledge is worth more, as it is the ideas of man's future and not his past misconceptions manifested continuously on his present.

In short, I am a blind man in a dark world. I am unable to see all that I experience and comprehend even less. Yet you are a blind man in a world of light. To be blind alone as to the future of my path, though unhelpful, is not nearly as bad as being blind of one's own mistakes in a light that is six billion persons strong.

I am blind but I am not a follower. You can see yet you are enslaved to the ideals of the herd. Ergo, I am the future and you are the past. The only question remains is how long it will be before I can pull you from the herd, or more threateningly so, see for myself in the darkness. Then man will be free of his past. Only then shall we all truly see.

A Short List of Delectable Quotations

"Think of competing ideas as elements on the periodic table. One replaces another, replaces another and the atomic number rises the element becomes heavier and more dense. And, as with elements, it is clear that there then comes a point where each competing idea becomes less and less stable holding increasingly less validity for an ever shorter amount of time."

"The purpose of government is solely to protect the rights of its people. Government ceases to govern and begins to tyrranize when the intentions of its officials overrun the rights of the people living in their nation."

"There comes a point where ones former oppressors or the members of a formerly oppressive party have moved on from their flaws and isms and it is from there the downtrodden must learn to move on or else continue to downtrodden themselves."

The Un-selfishness of Man

Man feels good when he does charitable deeds be them large or small. Some believe this to be itself an act for self-pleasure. That is, one does charitable work for their own selfish reasons. That may in fact be true, insofar as people could use this device to attain pleasure, but I pose the question: Why does the feeling exist in the first place? Why do we feel good when we do good deeds? Why not just feel good when we help ourselves? In a world where nature tends towards simplicity, it seems out of place that this sort of self-pleasure by charity should exist.

I believe when this feeling was created(or selectively survived evolution) the simplest reason for its continued existence is in the first action, the charity, that perhaps the second action, pleasure, is only a means to ensure that the first takes place as part of some epicurean or animalistic mind set remnant of our earlier days, like orgasm and procreation.

However orgasm is not the reason civilized man has children; children being the sole biological reason for sex; the reason is love. Thereby, I believe that the sole reason civilized man gives charity is love for others and not for personal gain.

The final question remains: Why is this important? Well, it is important because I believe it proves that man does not do things for personal pleasure but because they have a genuine desire to help others.

**********

AMENDMENT: People claim that humans have sex for pleasure. This is inherently faulty however. The reason that two people usually have sex is for love, the connection between two people. Some do have sex for pleasure, but a majority of man, I think you will agree, has sex for reasons tied to love (perhaps even giving pleasure to their partner).

AMENDMENT II: People claim that emotions and human reason are abstract, unidentifiable concepts. However, they are not. I'm of the firm belief that their is nothing to a person that is not materially in their body. Logic dictates this. Nothing can exist without existing by the very definition of the term. Faith does not make something true or false. Only hard evidence can prove the existence of something not rhetoric and idealistic conversation.

AMENDMENT III: People claim that there are no absolutes, that likewise man cannot be defined in such. This is correct. Perhaps there are some out there whose goal is to derive self-pleasure, consciously or subconsciously, from charity. I believe however, that they are the exception to the rule, not the rule themselves. As I stated, nature tends towards simplicity.

AMENDMENT IV: I acknowledge the possibility that this feeling like orgasm is reminiscent from pre-historic man.
***********

AMENDMENT of AMENDMENT II: Contrary to possible assumptions, this article itself is not nulled by the argument presented in AMENDMENT II. One is able to theorize reasons behind a physical existence (i.e. deduce the reason something exists), though as I said not the physical existence itself. Theorizing cannot make something exist or cease to exist.

The Darkness

We never understand that which we need.
We never realize that which we desire.
We are alone and in darkness in our lives,
Plowing into the future, blinder than blind.
We make it up as we go,
We think on our feet.
Why not, what've we got to lose,
Only our lives.

Yet it works somehow,
Day by day, our lives stretch by,
Cloaked in darkness, blinded by sight.
We find illumination in ourselves
To light our way
And all is good.

Happiness and depression,
Anger, rage, compassion, and love
Fear, trepidation, caution,
Expedition, daring, and bravery.
All in the darkness that we see.
Never before and never after,
Everafter we walk in darkness,
The darkness of our own design.