This might be a tough blog article to follow, partially because I'm going to skip through it very quickly. If you don't see the connections, the islands of thought I'm running through, I believe it will become clearer if you think on it long enough and may start to make more sense.
I know when I read something like that and at first it doesn't make total sense to me, if I think long enough on it or perhaps research it a bit, in the end I'm pretty sure I'd start to make sense of it.
Sometimes brilliance is not in the genius of the person speaking, but of the person listening.
I was just thinking about labels and came up with one for my thoughts on something I was talking about with someone this past week. I don't much like being labeled. As (believe it or not) Chris Hardwick said about social media postings, it's just a snapshot of an emotion and in minutes, it can change. In reality, I can vacillate myself as is needed.
Life in general is a grey area that changes from moment to moment which is in part why laws and religions are so disingenuous. Yes, it is better to have laws than not and to seek guidance in moral endeavors outside of oneself. But it is also necessary to realize as individuals and in dealing with others, that reality is more than merely how it appears to us and can appear differently from one to another, and again, thus the laws in a society which are necessary for a cohesive, agreed upon reality and its repercussions in able to achieve some kind of fairness.
I was talking to a guy at work the other day who said that you have to have your ideals and stick to them, regardless. Really? Maybe to a point, but when your ideas turn dysfunctional in a new environment or situation, or even simply in a new group, you have to adapt. For the best of your future, and possibly for all involved. To do otherwise is, stupid. "Sticking to your morals at all costs can be extremely dysfunctional. Or at very least, quite base and just simple thinking.
The problem with any absolute is that there is always a situation that won't fit. Where it becomes itself, dysfunctional. Something that Law and Religion don't account for, absolutes that will always in the end, fall down.
T'he gentleman I was talking to was talking with me about political campaign trails, presidential candidates, being the President, and lies. He thought that when it happens that the president said one thing and later did another later, the president was basically lying.
He didn't see at all that it was really reality hitting the candidate who becomes president and then with new previously information unavailable to him, that the realization set in that what he had intended during the campaign, meant now just about nothing in some cases. Reality actually dictates that what he had wanted just ain't gonna fly.
Yes, that probably doesn't happen as often as not. Still, he was very solid on his belief in absolutes. And yet, some of the greatest atrocities have occurred under some one or some group sticking to their absolutes. In fact, it's the great danger in religions.
"Life is black and white," some say. No, it's not. If you believe that, then mentally you're understanding of reality is that of a child.
Life is really various shades of grey, and then there are the colors. So one has to have a multi-layered comprehension to even somewhat accurately understand reality.
I sometimes wonder if this black and white way of looking at things isn't a social class issue or something that mostly first world people have the luxury of claiming adherence to. Is it something endemic to many Americans because they have it so good? Because many of us do not.
What I mean is, when you live in places where you regularly watch people die of starvation, crime or political abuse, maybe you simply don't have the luxury of seeing life as black or white because it can quickly get you or your loved ones killed.
There are many things we are not involved in during our daily lives: Presidential decisions, pilot's decisions in a plane that disappeared or in any flight for that matter, Israeli decisions on attacking their enemies; so many, many things.
God, could do all that, some might say.
If "God" does all that (whatever "that" is), then how can we ever understand reality, if we don't clearly see what is really going on, too? Or at least, try to.
I get my own orientation from espionage considerations years ago, in asking myself, how do spies need to think? What does a scenarist consider or need to know prior to walking into a dangerous situation where all die if they conceive incorrectly?
Writers are known as scenarists but so are spies. They constantly, sometimes in the moment, need to fully comprehend and plot out various resolutions to scenes. A writer does it for dramatic purposes, for entertainment and enlightenment. Spies do it to survive and to achieve a greater nationally (or corporate) bases solution.
One has to view any situation on the level of psychology, sociology, the groups involved in the scene, the individuals' orientation, family, friends, oneself, the weather...everything you can imagine.
You walk into a situation where the opposing group is against you and they will do one thing, but two of them have family situations leaning them otherwise. One has his faith shaken. One is for women's rights. The overall situation is not therefore, black and white. Thinking that way is what gets you killed. Therefore, life is various shades of grey. In that way, you walk out of their alive, perhaps with what you needed.
Hey, that's my scene. And this just turned into a blog article, so here we are.
This is my argument, you have to stick to your beliefs, but only an idiot sticks to them 100% of the time, in all cases, even when they no longer retain meaning. That makes some (mostly conservative types, ignorant types), uneasy. Because they cannot trust someone who is changeable like that. But if you consider all the possibilities too, if you are clever enough to see the grey and not just the black and white, then you will see what they see.
What bothers conservatives is they know they usually aren't clever enough to see the options others do and so it's unfair to them. Irony there is, they base their entire premise of politics, especially economic politics, on their being able to achieve, and the poor, need to on their own.
Pretty hypocritical, don't you think?
That isn't to say one becomes sleazy or a lowlife, but try to maintain your essential-ness. One has to be intelligent enough, mature enough, sophisticated enough, to see things clearly, to understand the situation and in the end, even when it goes against your nature or your morals, that you "do the right thing".
Anyway, that label that I thought of was:
Pantheistic Anarchist Libertine.
I searched on that and found this:
"Jesus Was A Pantheist".
Who knew?
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