Temporality

How do you think about your own temporality? Do you imagine yourself as a blip inexorably moving along a timeling? Or perhaps as a stationary observer watching the world temporally flow by like a river? (how very heraclitian of you!) Or perhaps time is more of a ecstasies-smear like Heidegger thinks? (i.e. every experience is not a discreet piece of a timeline but rather always influenced by the past, present and the future making it nearly impossible to distinguish any moment as simply past present or future...)

I definitely see aspects of the last two in my perception of time. I've really seemed to move away from idea #1. This is, however, how our society works so you can't totally abandon it and expect to live well and interact with others.

Meaningless Thoughts like the Purpose of Life

Initially, I had posited the purpose of life was not in just serving other people as I had been taught by my church, and I assume Christianity in general. I understood then service to mean mowing my neighbor's lawn, as it tends to be used. I deemed that creation/expression in artistic and thoughtful means was just as needful and live and meaningful. I now change that to include 2 others: to commune and to experience. I think still that they who know the most (both inward and outward cognitions) are truly the most free. It is one's duty to seek to learn more--through others and life, rather than simply through the inner conversation present within the mind. We must build and maintain relationships, sharing life's joys, asking to know more, having the humility to invite and need others' contributions, and give and receive courage to push ourselves even farther. Relationships occur quantitatively no matter what. How many of them and of what quality they are is totally another matter. There is something in that d and c verse of seeking learning out of the best books. But I also say seek after activities, people, books, talks and so forth. Determine their value and then seek the best. I submit in soul building, whether it is God's purpose or not. It is mine. None of these processes: service, creation, community, experience will never end, any of them, until death wraps me in its shroud or the great beyond beckons me to do so longer. At least that is how my hopes knit. Growing and changing in alternating pluralistic environments... and it is wonderful. This is eternal life for me as of yet.

To defend "service" as a concept, I know that experiencing, expressing/creating, and communing can all be labelled service in the proper context. The same could be true with any of them: all could be put under experience, or all under expression, and all under communion. Regardless, the point is to further identify the areas of service, the directions in which one takes that builds meaning. Most would not group the rest of these with mowing your neighbor's lawn. Service is meant to be selfless, apparently. I urge more service which directly benefits both the self and others, though of course it may turn in selfless ways too. In other words, the activities need not be sacrifices. They can be fun. But if you wish to be a stickler, and suggest opportunity costs as sacrifices, everything is a sacrifice, which I then believe demeans and lessens the purpose of the word. Argue if you will. Alas...

Revisiting Paschel's Wager

Yeah, so this pretty much has nothing to do with Paschel's Wager. There are many other options in the "next life" if it exists than hell or eternal life. But I wanted to consider the Either/Or position. I think the concept of eternal life, especially the Mormon idea of eternal life, is so intriguing, so fascinatingly wonderful, that to prove it and have absolute certainty of it is nigh impossible. It is such a grand idea that the evidence requisite to prove it would be much higher than proving the theory of relativity, evolution, or what have you. Something that promises that much requires so much more evidence to effectively convince on that they are not being scammed. However, at the same time, the promises are so great that it requires so much more evidence to toss it all out completely. If religious experiences give even the slightest glimmer of hope that this reality may be real, then of course we cling to it, hold to it--it's that worth while if it is true, it is everything. Then this is why we struggle with it, it is so precious, yet so hard to pin down. We teeter-totter in our trust of the promise, but to forsake it completely (or invest completely) is quite the ordeal for any conscious thinker. At least those are my views.

Why?

Pretty sure that's why.

If wishes were fishes...

I really wish I didn't have to sleep. Think of all the things I could get done in those 6-whatever hours! Man. Tonight I was thinking..."I have 5 hours to sleep before a big day tomorrow. Can I get in some Kierkegaard before bed?"

Hahahahahahaha....no way...I'll get sick so fast it'll blow your mind without sleep. Still, I waste a lot of time during the day and I don't think about that as a waste...weird, eh? How do I transfer my post-midnight energy for doing things to the middle of the day? Say 2 PM?

Wait...

I'm Jane?