Stop! You're doing it wrong!

We've all heard it - the whole "life is shit" speech which always sounds so much like the last time you heard it that you could swear pessimists had an underground club somewhere in a warehouse where they drone the same words over and over until they can say them all by themselves. Then they're back next Sunday for some brushing up.

Yes that is some light humour over there. I figure that the best way to start a blog which argues against the view that life is a tragedy is with a bit of comedy. Anyway, now on to why life isn't shit.

Well you see the thing is...life cannot be horrible. Because that feeling of life being horrible doesn't come from life per se. It comes from the way you're handling life. It's very easy to say life is horrible when you keep looking for things like "fairness" , "sanctity", "forever after"'s etc. etc. Well obviously life is horrible then. You're looking for a bunch of things which just don't exist. We made them up to make life less scary.

Think about the universe for a second. Where in the universe is anything fair? Do planets which get obliterated due to getting a tad too close to a black hole get a second chance? Nope. What about sanctity? Well where have you ever seen anything spared in the universe? I assure you, a meteor collision will spare nothing and no one. And forever? What lasts forever in the universe? Just in case you don't get the picture yet: Zilch.

Life is none of these things. Life is ever-changing, uncaring, unbalanced and restless.

So it's definitely horrible when you're looking for fair treatment, kept promises, a love ever after, unchanging happiness, total respect and all the other leprechauns at the end of the rainbow.

And why did we come up with these fairy tales? Well for one things it all makes life less scary. It's much easier to believe that you're going to achieve your goals when life is fair. You don't need to worry too much about the future if it's possible to just settle down and live happily ever after. It's just so much easier.

But that's the shame of it too though. Why go for these dreams? That's no kind of living if you're not fighting for something you believe in. You ever go to the theatre and watch just the last scene of a play? No. You go for the whole play, the whole plot. It's not about the ending it's about getting to the ending. And of course, nothing ever ends, so once you're done you can catch your breathe for a while but soon after you're off again.

So in short; Life doesn't suck. You suck at life. Now get your ass in gear and start living with a fighting mentality.

P.S. For the record, the "should"'s and "shouldn't"'s of our dear little norms....also dreams. So in the spirit of unpredictability.....fuck' em, they can kiss my ass.

You'll have to answer eventually.

Who are you?

Many people answer this question with a list of useless syllables. "Jonathan Ebejer," for example. That is by no means who I am. It is what people call me (unless they use a nickname) but in no way is it who I am.

Who are you? More importantly, how do you go about answering that question? Unfortunately we tend to look to the world around us to find out who we are. We place ourselves in certain groups, certain beliefs, and label all kind of -ists to ourselves.

Such an obsession on looking at the world around us to define ourselves is like measuring the shape of each and every other puzzle piece except the one we're interested in. Then we hope to guess how this one puzzle piece fits in with the rest.

Needless to say, trying to find out who we are in such a way can never prove to be effective. Sometimes it might completely misguide us and take us to places or situations which are not where we belong. After a certain amount of time we begin to feel out of place, maybe even alone and depressed...which is to be expected as eventually you will realise you are not where you're meant to be.

The most effective way of finding out who you are is, unsurprisingly, observing yourself. The imagination is key here, as it will show you who you wish to be. That image of who you want to be is much more real than you may think....if you want to be something it is a clear sign that deep down inside that something is part of who you really are. Now I'm not talking about wanting a car or something pathetic like that. I'm talking about character.

I call wanting a car "pathetic" mostly because material objects like that are more often than not there to try to down out who we really are and just become what we own. Think about it. Imagine somebody came into the room right now and asked you to describe yourself. You wouldn't begin with your personality. You'd begin with your job, your school, your family....everything in your life which isn't you. Then maybe you'd get to describing your personality....if you even remember that it's there to be described. I'm sure you can remember an occasion you were asked to describe yourself and didn't have much to say. As you stood there grasping for thoughts, the only things which didn't pass your mind were your own virtues, weren't they?

And why do we all have embarrassing moments, but still feel ashamed when we look like fools? Isn't it to hide from who you are? To hide from your clumsiness, forgetfulness, inadequacy etc.? You want to look strong don't you? You want to seem in control- to seem like everything's in your hands. How much of your life is really in your hands? Very shockingly little. But we don't want to admit that. Everyone's a king, nobody's a fool.

I have no idea why we have these self-destructive tendencies. Maybe it's instinct, maybe we're brought up that way. Maybe it's the media or the government or the educational system. I don't know. And I won't pretend to know.

So with all this in mind, let's try again;

Who are you?

Oops.

Recently I've been feeling myself growing more and more distant from my blog. And I think I know why.

When I started this thing a few months back (early March) it wasn't much more than just an experiment. I've always loved writing, and so I found it quite easy and interesting to blog.

Back then, though, I was going through what I can only describe as an emotional dryspell. I was thinking too much and not feeling enough. I still acted as if I felt perfectly fine, but only because I didn't want to admit anything was wrong. Actually looking back now I realise that maybe I acted out my "emotions" stronger than I should have, trying to over-compensate in my own mind.

And then- inevitably, since I wasn't allowing myself to change- something bad happened. And that something bad left me, to say the least, in a very bad state. I apologetically admit that for one or two weeks after that I was a complete twat. Thankfully, everybody had the good grace to put up - or at least pretend to put up (it's the thought that counts) with me and my twattitude.

However, this "something bad" served as a well-needed wake up call. Gradually I began to realize exactly how much I was holding myself back. I started realizing that I was thinking far too much and letting myself become involved in very deep questions without taking a look at myself and asking myself if I was alright.

I wasn't. People can think but people can feel too, and as I focused so much on thinking the part of me which felt started getting more and more worn out.

Once I realised this I started to wake up to just how human I really am. This blog, however, had always been about thinking, and for some reason I began feeling less and less comfortable with it. Now I realise it's because I still associate this blog with cold thinking and I never let myself express who I am or what I feel when I write.

I don't want to change that in this blog however. Maybe I'll make another blog and let me express myself in that one (I don't mind making the blogs, I'm not after any kind of success- I write for the sake of writing.)

Now that I've come clean about this blog I hope that my feelings of unease will go away. But since this IS a thinking blog after all- maybe I should end with a thought-

Remember who you are.

Preface.

Technology and philosophy are not so different from each other.

Technology is the manipulation of the physical world to create better devices to make humans' lives easier. The perfect device has never been made and its existence is dubious at best.

Philosophy, on the other hand, is the manipulation of concepts and ideas to make better theories about life to make humans' lives easier. Much like technology, the perfect theory has never been made, and its existence is dubious at best.

Those uncertain about just how valuable philosophy is may very well ask the same question about technology. Several claim that because philosophy has never reached a universally accepted and completely flawless theory it is a waste of time. Likewise, however, technology has never created the perfect device. Does this make technology a waste of time?

Indeed no. Technology constantly improves upon old devices or replaces them for better devices. The same is so in philosophy. New theories either build upon or replace old ones, but that does not mean that all philosophy is in vain. One cannot argue that we have come a long way from the ethics of the Dark Ages.

Nowadays the newest theories in philosophy exist to make life easier. Whether one uses the most suitable or the most cutting-edge theory is a different question, but the fact remains that he is using a theory much like one would use a device - to make a problem easier to solve.

It is unfortunate, however, that more people do not educate themselves in the field of philosophy, particularly in ethics, for it is very much like they are living in the 21st century but facing their problems with 11th century technology. Why shouldn't one equip oneself with the most advanced tools in facing life's problems?

Writing for everyone.

I am writing this for everybody to understand - and hopefully appreciate-why I do what I do. I will try to use a vocabulary which everyone can understand and to show the steps behind my reasoning as clearly as possible.

Today I shall be writing about ethics- the general rules which tell us about what we should and should not do in life.

Nowadays almost everyone has his or her own personal outlook on life- and therefore how one should live it. When one sees the vast amount of different opinions which exist it is very tempting to just jump straight to the conclusion that life- and therefore ethics- are different for everyone. This kind of reasoning is called "relativism" - the denial of there being any absolute and universal truth.

Now while it is true that as of yet there doesn't exist one fully complete proven ethical law- it can be shown how from the vast majority of different views one can quickly narrow it down to only a handful of possible choices.

Let us first begin to do so by proving that some absolute things must exist. This is VERY simple: just think about the phrase "Everything is relative." If you except it as true then you create a paradox because you have excepted an absolute truth while at the same time saying that absolute truths don't exist! Therefore some things must be absolute.

So now we know that some things are absolute and some things are relative. The relative things depended on other relative things which depended on other relative things etc etc etc until eventually the relative things will have to depend on the absolute things.

Therefore we can see that we do not have an infinite number of possible situations- only a limited number. Situation A differs from Situation B because of how they relate to an absolute thing- but since there is a limited number of absolute things and a limited number of how they relate to other things then there is a limited number of situations.

WAIT DON'T CLOSE YOUR WINDOW. OK, I admit that it isn't as simplistic as I promised- but things get simpler from here on. The summary of what we said till now is simple: There is a limited number of possible situations which all have something to do with an absolute truth. Now that is important because it means that if we can define what these absolute things are we can come up with a general rule for every possible situation- since they ALL relate to the same absolute things. See? Simple.


Now then. These situations all have something in common: a person is making a choice. So for our purposes we can forget for now about all the irrelevant pieces of a person- bones, organs, skin etc. I'm not saying you can live without them- but when considering the case of making a choice the important piece of a person is the choice-making bit. Now we have to understand how this bit works.

Well, overall, people make choices depending on their list of priorities. They weigh out what is important to them and make their choice based on that. This is were the relative piece comes in: because different things are important to different people.

BUT- importance is also a relative thing. The leftover lasagna is MUCH more important to a starving man than it is to a rich, well-fed man. So is there one specific thing we should give importance to?

On a personal level- not really. We all have our likes and dislikes- there isn't a general rule for that. But when you think about ethics things change. Because relative to ethics- things do have a different importance- and this time in general, not on a personal level.

For example: people are the very very very most important things in ethics- because they are the only conscious beings which can make an ethical choice. It doesn't take much brainpower to figure out that if people are the only things which have ethics- then they're the most important things in ethics.

I AM NOT SAYING THAT ALL OTHER LIFE IS USELESS. I am simply saying that people have more importance than other living things when it comes to ethics. Therefore helping other people should be at the top of everybody's priority-list, and animals/nature/God/religion/money /etc. in second-place.

So now we have a rough sketch of what everybody's priority list should look like. But still some people might say that "helping other people" is relative too. Well, on a non-ethical level yes. But like I said before- in ethics we have to give number one importance to the choice-making ability of people. So helping other people essentially means making them more in control of their lives.

A quick summary of helping other people is promoting:

Peace
Freedom
Health
Morality

Therefore- we can see that even though we cannot (yet) come up with a full law for ALL ethics- we at least have these four guideline: peace, freedom, health, morality. And anything which goes against any one of these can be called utterly wrong without the need of going into relativism.

Therefore ANYONE, ANYWHERE, at ANY TIME can prove that racism, violence, abortion, imprisonment, torture, sexism and many other vices are all wrong. Nobody can ever say " Well it depends"

Hopefully I have managed to keep this clear and easy to follow for the everyday man-on-the-street. If not I sincerely apologise. I do hope, however, that those who understood my reasoning can see why I insist on philosophizing about ethics- with general laws about ethics we can be sure and determined when it comes to fighting against injustices all over the world.

From misery to misery- we rise to fall.

Consider this: What are we born with?

Biologically you'd say our bodies, romantically you'd say our personalities or our futures.

But our bodies and our personalities are part of us- and our futures are things we strive to achieve.

What are we really born with?

Nothing. Nothing at all. Everything is given to us- family, shelter, food, clothing, protection. Everything. And some of us don't even get all of that.

We start out with nothing....yet later in life when we have nothing we're depressed. And why? We're hardwired that way. We get depressed because we want to achieve something we don't have- either a physical object or a situation we want in our lives. We want to make all the positive situations in life a reality- and if we can't have that we get depressed.

Depression is the mind's way of telling itself to get up and work for something. If everybody was happy all the time they would never try for something- why bother if they're happy? (a safe guaranteed future qualifies as a "thing'' also)

The mind needs its depression. Depression is key. If you don't allow yourself to become depressed you won't ever have that motivation you need to go on. Happy people are the least motivated.

The Past and why it's not important.

The important thing to realise about the past is this: it doesn't exist. That's why it's the past. It was. Now it isn't. What do exist are memories of the past.

These memories can be either a source of joy or a source of sorrow for us. Either way it is irrelevant. Since the past no longer exists these memories might as well just be stand-alone thoughts. They might as well just be things which you imagined.

The present on the other and is very real. It can easily be described as everything which is real - because since everything exists now and not in the past, everything which is in the present must be real and vice-versa.

And the present is made up of consequences of the past. That is the only part of the past-and indeed of our memories- which matters; the consequences. The past might as well just never have been- might as well just be a great illusion. But the consequences of that illusion exist in the present.

So next time a memory haunts you and you can't block it out- remember that it's not real. Only it's consequences are real. And if you aren't happy with those consequences get out of memory lane and do something about them!

N.B.) The present is the past of the future- so plan your consequences wisely.