To topic:
There are lots of easy questions to ask about just about anything. There are the who, what, where, when, why, and hows for any given situation. These questions form what could be called the base of knowledge. From this base, we can continue to ask more specific, and even more specific questions, culminating in a complete, well rounded (or edged, depending on circumstance) understanding of a happening. Accordingly, we as humans often ask of ourselves similar questions; the familiar "why are we here" and "where will death lead us" types of things. Typically, we find ourselves making up answers for the sake of having answers, explaining phenomena and impossibilities with simplistic (and entirely faked) logic. There isn't any problem with this. After all, if we didn't want the answers, we wouldn't ask the questions. Who cares?
Following this mindset (or perhaps, avoiding it entirely), I attempt to ask the questions that I may actually have some chance at answering: questions that have a lot to do with argument and logic. As one can guess, these two don't necessarily correspond.
Adolescence is a tricky stage. I probably should be consumed by something else, but for some asinine reason, I am drawn to the way human beings live their lives. Why do we rely so heavily on a sense of structure? I already have some sorts of conclusions, drawn from readings on culture, philosophy, geography, religion, etc. Here, I elaborate on some of these observations.
The Road, a Pulitzer Prize winning novel, offers a unique perspective on humanity: the earth has just been scorched into oblivion by apocalypse. Few organic things have survived. You are a human man, traveling down a desolate road with your son, searching for canned
goods and anything that will aid you into the next day, marching towards the sea. Though it remains fiction (and hopefully will continue to do so), The Road is a scary conjecture. While most of us can deal with boredom to some extent, how mind blowing would it be to to have nothing to do but simply survive? No bed, no home, no neighborhood to return to. No alarm clock, no English muffin, no obnoxious boss. Just a will to survive. If it happened tomorrow, I have my doubts that any survivors would stick around. Not because they have the desire to die, necessarily, but because they would have no desire to live. Natural optimists, we are. But if there really is nothing to look forward to, why look forward at all? This, I believe, is so frightening because people and their sense of sanity is based heavily upon ritual, be it physical, spiritual, or mental. There is no need for push-ups, praying, or philanthropy on a planet where the willing harvest human slave limbs for something to eat. Call it unrealistic, but we all know how certain people (people we work with, live with, love) get when something as simple as not adding a packet-and-a-half of Sweet n' Low to their coffee will ruin a whole week. Is it really so profound to assume that if we as a species ever encountered such a situation, we would kill ourselves off rather than exist in what would be considered a state of primitivity? Why have we let ourselves become so defined by routine?Do we know the answers? There is always a simple answer to that... No. Is it fun to make up answers? Sure is! That's why this isn't going to be the only post on this blog. Tune in soon...
