mahiwaga

So it occurred to me that maybe that’s my only purpose on this Earth, to ease the suffering of at least a small handful of people. Nothing fancy, nothing glorious. While sucky, loneliness is only one of the multitude of varieties of suffering available on this planet, and it is certainly nowhere near the worst. I guess. That’s how I get myself through the day, at least.

It also occurred to me that there is only one way to relieve suffering, and that is by removing the thing that is causing suffering. So if I suffer because I do not get what I want, the relief comes not in getting what I want, but in removing my want in the first place. Or as has been stated more eloquently than this by wiser minds: all desire leads to suffering.

Even if it is the human condition to seek companionship. To share my hopes and my fears, my aspirations, my ambitions, my shame, my failures with another person who actually gives a shit. Even if this is the condition in which I have been created. If this want shall never be fulfilled, then the only way to stop suffering is stop wanting.

It’s so much easier to write it down than to actually live it.

We all want the good guys to win. Most major religions prophesy that Good™ will triumph in the end, even against overwhelming odds, even if it seems that most folks are playing for the dark side.

But you gotta remember, Good™ is always the side that wins. History (and prophecy) are always written by the winner. No one really knows jack shit about anything unless you were actually there, and then usually not even then.

And it’s in the best interest of the people you want to win to claim that they are actually going to win. Because until that prophecy comes true or is proven false, in some unspecified time in the murky future, there’s no way to tell ahead of time. How do you know that it’s actually going to come true? How do you know that they’re not just saying that to keep morale up?

How do we know that the Right People™ will actually win? How do we know that the prophecies aren’t all mixed around and screwed up? I think that the fact of the matter is that we don’t.

That’s why we call it faith. If we knew for sure, it wouldn’t be a matter of faith. It would be a matter of fact.

And unless you’re a hard core solipsist who doubts that anything actually exists, it’s redundant and unnecessary to believe in fact. It just is. Even if you disbelieve it, it won’t go away.

Now, I’ve been struggling with the whole “If God is good, why does he allow evil to happen?” question for several years now, and every so often, I come up with something that is temporarily satisfying. Nothing ever really sticks, though. It’s all nebulous and immaterial. It doesn’t predict anything. It’s ultimately a fairy tale that helps me sleep at night, that’s all.

So my current scenario is this: maybe God really does exist, is unquestionably good, and is omnipotent to boot. But he’s got a lot of bad guys going for him. They’ve got him in a stalemate in heaven. In the end, he could always win, by obliterating the universe and starting all over again, but he doesn’t want to do that. Because that means destroying us. And, in the greater scheme of things, us not existing is a far worse scenario than us existing, but suffering. But maybe, because of the stalemate in heaven, Good and Evil make a deal. No nuclear options. You don’t mess around with creation, and we don’t bomb it back to the Big Bang. That’s the deal that God and the bad guys make. So God is forced to do things on the down-low, behind Evil’s backs, in slow and subtle ways.

The problem is that, because God is Good™, she can’t just go around making promises to the Bad Guys and then breaking them. Even though she knows that they wouldn’t think twice about breaking promises they made to her. I mean, what’s the point of being Good™ if you do the same things that Evil™ does? That’s why there’s a war in the first place. (This is also the reason that the War on Terror™ is a pointless endeavor if we end up surrendering our civil liberties and commit war crimes. What’s the point of pretending that we’re the Good Guys if we end up doing the same things the Bad Guys do?)

So God’s hands are tied by the fact that God must be virtuous.

And yet Evil can’t win, because if they try to wreck Creation, God will then no longer have any incentive not to nuke the universe and start over. And they’re not powerful enough to actually overcome God.

Again, it’s a stalemate.

So it occurs to me that that’s probably why God isn’t going around making sure that no one is suffering, and that everyone gets their heart’s desire. Because this is War, man. God’s got a lot of other problems to deal with right now, and your sad pathetic ass is the least of her worries.

Bad Things™ happen because the only alternative would be non-existence. It’s a tough call. Especially if I were constrained to always doing the Right Thing™.

It also occurred to me that my spiritual cosmology is riddled by Tolkienisms. My concept of the Eternal Struggle Between Good and Evil™ is basically cribbed off The Lord of the Rings. Evil, represented by Sauron, is nearly completely omnipotent, and holds sway over almost the entire world. He’s got control of Balrogs and Dragons and almost infinite armies of Orcs. If not for the fact that Good™ always wins, smart money should be on Sauron to win. The odds are overwhelming. Good, represented by Frodo Baggins, has no magical powers, is physically weak, is frequently frightened, is easily wounded and maimed, and in the end pretty much fails completely. It is only an act of Grace™ that saves the day.

I think that Phillip K Dick’s cosmology is similarly constructed. Evil (in the guise of Richard M Nixon George W Bush Ferris F Fremont and the military-industrial complex) pretty much rules the entire world, and only a few people actually remain free. Only the weak, the oppressed, the suffering remain in opposition to Global Capitalism Evil, and they are easily imprisoned, destroyed, and otherwise neutralized. And yet, somehow, Good manages to win out, just barely, and probably just temporarily.

But the Act of Grace™ is important. If Bilbo actually did kill Gollum way back when, then it would’ve been all over. Frodo’s failure would’ve been complete, and Evil would’ve triumphed. It wasn’t power or force that won the day. It was doing the Right Thing™. An act of mercy. An act of compassion. What the Bad Guys call “weakness.”

But if you don’t have mercy or compassion, then you’re playing for the other side.

Retrospect teaches us that doing the Right Thing™ doesn’t always mean that we’ll be rewarded. A lot of times, we actually get punished. Frodo ends up suffering because Bilbo did the Right Thing. Why is this? It’s because Evil is a lot more powerful than Good, and they hold a lot of the top positions. But overwhelming force doesn’t always win. (Just look at Iraq. And Vietnam before that.) So if we have faith, if we have hope, then we’ve got to do the Right Thing™, come hell or high water.

I guess that’s the way all our myths and legends are constructed. The Good Guys almost lose completely, and yet somehow in the end manage to pull it off against overwhelming odds. Maybe it’s because the world really is constructed this way.

No one ever won fame, fortune, power, or renown by doing the Right Thing. I’m of the opinion that most normal human beings are actually pretty good at understanding what the Right Thing is in the majority of situations. But most of us don’t do it because it almost never gets us to where we want to go.

So that’s where the battle lies. Think for yourself. Recognize that you really do know what you should do. And when you choose otherwise, remember that you did choose it. We always have a choice. The consequences may not be pleasant, but we always have a choice.