22 March 2015

Final wanderings plus one selfie

I try to post blurry webcam photos of myself at least twice per month, just to keep track of how handsome I have become since I started abusing alcohol. For this one, I strapped a helmet-cam to one of the rhinoceros rats who’ve overrun my apartment, in order to capture my physical appearance from the rodent’s point of view:

NOTE: Two days ago I began the process of emptying my brain of all contents. I wrote one blog entry and then another blog entry, but my mind still had some thoughts remaining; so the present entry should drain the final dregs. OK, now I’ll give the bold title and fake an end.

Thoughts

Why not let some corporation own all the air? If they performed the hard work of manufacturing the atoms that comprise our atmosphere – which they did – then it’s only right that they should profit from their efforts. Lazy people who did not create a single atom of air should not be allowed to breathe. This is how God would want it; which is to say: This is how Saul of Tarsus would want it.

I’ve been told: “Trust God alone, not humans.” But all of the beings who have ever told me this were human. In fact, anyone who’s ever articulated anything to me in an audible language was human. Except one lizard. And my old central heating unit.

Vain conceit moves me to assert that all Bibles were written by mortals. But now I’m told: “No! Holy Scripture is the Word of God!” So I’m stumped for a moment, but then I realize that this sage who just refuted me is a human being as well; so, according to the advice “trust God alone,” I cannot trust him. In fact, nothing that I’ve learned about God can be trusted, according to this maxim.

But what pious folk really mean when they say “Trust God rather than humans,” is something more like “Trust only the humans who agree with my own religious view.” It’s so simple it’s boring.

Very wisely, God never speaks an audible word to anyone other than certain, favored individuals – but, even to these chosen ones, God only speaks, as it were, in a private message, person-to-person; cloaked in mystery, crouching behind screens and in shadows, whispering secrets in the manner of an illegal drug deal.

Thus God delivers his Word to his prophet – at this point, we have verifiable evidence of divine communication. But, unfortunately, as soon as a prophet utters God’s prophecy to his people, the people are hearing a human voice, not to be trusted.

As an experiment, we might all agree to refrain from attributing any saying to God except that which we personally witness being spoken by a deity. So I would never assert that “God says such-&-such; for it’s written in the Bible,” because I didn’t witness God utter those particular absurdities – only Ezekiel, for instance, would be able to make that claim. Then infidels might laugh and call him a madman, but those who appreciate dadaism will salute Ezekiel as a poet.

And I wish that people would stop making miniseries about killers. Not because I think that killing is unethical, and not because the subject makes me squeamish; but just because we’ve seen so many of those types of shows, it’s grown monotonous: really, we’ve done death to death.

One single millisecond after I wrote that last remark, I realized my error. We’ll never wear out the subject of killing, just as we’ll never wear out the subjects of parenthood, friendship, love, deception, etc. All of the central aspects of this existence will invariably ‘work’ as art. But my point is that the pendulum of fashion has been stuck too long in the position of violent crime. I wish that artists would try to portray more optimistic visions of life, if only for the sake of variety. And swing back to the other extreme when utopia grows dull.

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