Strong motivator

Fear of that we cannot control and know, is a strong motivator.

Species (the species is the principal natural taxonomic unit, ranking below a genus (Homo) and denoted by a Latin binomial, e.g., Homo sapiens) needs are understood and fulfilled by us, are realized at some level, or we would not exist.  No man is an island, or a rock for that matter.

The extent, to which any two humans get along, varies.  To discuss ‘human’ needs, in a macro sense, we must consider only the modal/successful human.  This essay is not about individual success or failure.

We must assume the existence of successful human drives/motives, to find sustenance, shelter and a mate, because humans have existed for some time and continue to thrive.  Without the success of these drives, we wouldn’t exist.  What pushes humans beyond a subsistence existence?  Is it fear?

Can we attribute everything we do that exceeds striving for subsistence/existence to fear?  Fear of hunger not fear of starvation.  Fear of being cold and/or alone, not fear of starving to death or not procreating.  Fear of our children’s future turning out badly and their not procreating not fear of them ending up working at a fast food restraint into their forties.  Fear of a bully’s threat not fear of being murdered.  Fear of humiliating debilitation in old age.

Do we do what we do because ‘we can project into the future and are afraid of what we cannot know or predict’?

Lebensraum

Lebensraum Le·bens·raum (German pronunciation: [ˈleːbənsˌʁaʊm], "living space") refers to conceptions and policies of a form of settler colonialism connected with agrarianism that existed in Germany from the 1890s to the 1940s. One variant of this policy was supported by the Nazi Party and Nazi Germany.

The U.S.
The world-wide establishment of capitalism, by means of economic globalization by the U.S. has been called the "American Lebensraum", which is criticized as a neocolonialism and as cultural imperialism.

Judgement

The concepts of positive and negative are ubiquitous.  We depict these concepts as an infinite line in both directions with a ‘0’ in the middle.  The further you go to the right the more positive the number and to the left the more negative.  These concepts are similar to our perception of good and evil.  The analogy is not perfect but it is useful.  That which is principled, from good to better and bad to worse, is unlike numbers.  The good/bad continuum is not a simple progression of things getting better or worse with zero in the middle.  Still we agree that some things are less evil, negative, than others.  Kicking someone in the shins isn’t as bad as shooting them in the head.  A mass murder in a church is not as evil as genocide.  And some things are better than others, giving a friend twenty bucks to cover a minor debt isn’t as good as loving someone enough to marry them and honor them for the rest of your life and being civil at your Thanksgiving dinner isn’t as positive a behavior as giving up your life so others may survive.  In this model the good things are positive forces in our world and the evil things are negative.  Sometimes it is difficult to determine which good or which evil goes where on the continuum or even what goes on the good side and what goes on the bad side of zero.  Like I said, it’s not a perfect analogy but it illustrates my point.

So let’s construct a perfect world where we eliminate all behavior and actions less than zero.  There is no bad, nothing negative.  There is no evil.  And in this perfect world once evil is eliminated zero behavior comes into question.  ‘You could have done something!’  Sooner or later the initial euphoria over eradicating all evil wears off.  More needs to be done and zero behavior is magically done away with too.  There is no room for not behaving positively in a perfect world where there is inequity and need.

In this perfect world there are no evil deeds and no zero actions, just positive deeds, only the good line of progressively more positive behaviors stretching on and on, each one more positive than the last.  How long will satisfaction with nothing but good last?  How long until someone questions the small good things?  How long until someone asks ‘Couldn’t you have given him forty bucks instead of twenty?  Ya know, he really could have used an extra twenty bucks’.  And a push to eliminate the small, enhance-able good behaviors will begin, again and again ad nauseum.

That which is good and that which is evil is a matter of definition and degree.  Definition and degree that only exist because we judge, because there will always be those who say, ‘You should have…’  We cannot eradicate evil because we cannot do away with the capacity to judge.  As long as the capacity to judge exists, someone will judge something as bad.

You cannot eliminate the use of the word ‘should’ in your vocabulary or the speech and minds of others.  You can try to stop saying ‘should’ but even if you are successful, it will still be there in your head.

Whenever the word ‘should’ is used, you have the obligation to yourself and those you love to ask ‘Why?’  Make the ‘should’ justify its judgment.  Make the ends justify the means and then justify the ends. If the ‘should’ can be justified, maybe something ‘should’ change.

Maybe something ‘should’ be done.  And maybe not, we live in a world where ‘zero’ actions still exist.  In the small part of the world that you presume to control you owe it to yourself to be the one who decides.

Random Thoughts...

Upon meeting someone for the first time (or when first viewing their blog) I am interested in learning what their moral argument is?  I don’t care what or where they eat.  It doesn’t matter to me what sports team(s) they like/support or where they’ve been.  If they are an artist, with talent, I may enjoy their art but only if it suits my tastes.  What I want to know is; what is right and wrong to them, and why?  How do they defend their actions, their life, their goals?  Their deeds and misdeeds, their ends.

I am more and more intrigued by the question; if there is an infinite being could we understand its plan?  By plan I mean, rational, goal(s), logic.  And by human standards is the plan even to be judged weather or not it is logical or rational?  I have no reason to believe an infinite’s wisdom would be comprehensible to me.  An eternal being that existed before time and will continue to exist once time stops must have a perspective that no human can comprehend.

There is always at least one clear path forward, although the path available may not be the path you prefer.

Set before the powerful, are difficult things, before the weak, only small things.

Things turn out as they should be, as they have to be.

To Choose or Not.

Choosing to die is unnecessary.  You do not have to choose death, sooner or later it will choose you.  But to live, that is something you must choose.  There is no assurance that you will exist from one moment to the next.  At some point, even if you choose to live you will not.  If you are going to put some energy into a choice, choose to live.  And if you continue to breathe, at least you know that it is, in part, due to your choice.  And when you no longer choose to live just stop.

Life is a deceit, a pretty one admittedly but a deceit all the same.  It is fragile and often impossible to maintain but quite worthy of your best effort.  Death is so much more honest; simple, straight forward, permanent, easy.  Life takes a lot of effort; all the choices, all the pitfalls, all the unknowns, all the obscure traps.  Death’s not like life, one choice and wham, it’s over; no more struggling, no more surprises, no more mistakes, no more responsibilities.  No more having to choose.

Each time I wake it is a new day, a new life.

Each time I go to sleep the old day, the old life, disappears.

The meaning is not contained in the words.

The words can be written a thousand times and if no one understands the meaning

it is as if they had not been.

The meaning resides in you.

Why is there something rather than nothing?  

If there was nothing you wouldn’t be asking that question.

If you are infinite, without end, and all you create is finite 

how do you feel when your creations pass away?

There is always a clear path forward 

although it may not be the path you prefer.

What is the Goal of Human Evolution?

If we are able to enhance and/or engineer ourselves and/or our progeny what is the goal? To be stronger, bigger, smaller, smarter, faster? Do we want to live forever? Or is it to be happier, universally compassionate, more intuitive or insightful? Can these attributes be engineered? Will we find them on another planet?

We need to find remedies for our weaknesses. People who are sick or injured need to be cured or at least comforted. But I can't see that the end all and be all of human existence has anything to do with our physical existence beyond our physical comforts.

Broadly, the ultimate goal of human existence is happiness and that can't be genetically engineered or manufactured through implanted enhancements. I would like to have TiVo eyes as much as the next person. It would be a great toy but it is not the answer for my need to be happy.

http://www.businessinsider.com/humans-in-1000-years-2015-10

Unsolvable

Moral Problem; we are saving the weak and in so weakening the entire human race.  

Human evolution depends upon the weak dying before they reproduce and the reproduction of only the most evolved.  So what do we do with the lesser among us?

Capitalists' Adgenda

If it were possible to fill every job vacancy available there would still be people without a job.  How will those people support themselves?  Social Democrats suggest that the wealth of the working and just clearly rich, be spread around to feed and clothe those without a visible source of income.  Capitalists see no reason why the poor shouldn’t just starve or freeze to death.  Puritans see riches that one controls as sign of divine grace and starving and freezing to death proof of moral error.  Protestant ethic declares that riches are a matter of predestination.  But none of this addresses the problem of more people than jobs.  If there were more jobs than people the discussion would be different.  Until someone comes up with a way to create jobs out of thin air the only solution to the ‘more people than jobs’ conundrum is to reduce the population.  Limiting the number of children a couple can have didn’t turn out well in China.  And now they have upped it to two but I still don’t think they have it rite.  Until it becomes the socially responsible thing to do to have no children I don’t see the Earth’s population decreasing.

Capitalists see no reason to shrink the pool of working poor who take their underpaid jobs and put pressure on all of us to work for less.  The problems of the poor are not capitalists’ problems and hunger induces workers to withstand otherwise intolerable conditions for unconscionably low compensation. 

You are not God

If it is possible that there is a God, which is knowable to humans and that knowledge is based upon faith not merely knowledge learned as language is learned, from example and observation, then there is no reason to believe that the knowing of God could happen to anyone at any place without any prior knowledge of said God’s existence.  And that does not happen.

Could you, through faith and the sure knowledge of your everlasting spirit, know unerringly, that there is a God?  And in the absolute knowing of God wouldn’t you have to have some, possibly infinitely small, piece of God as part of yourself so as to know, rather than to believe or have faith in the fact that God exists?  Wouldn’t there have to be something within you that was God that was real for you, to unerringly know this ‘truth’?

Can and/or should we assume that God is rational?  And if we do assume that God is rational can we further assume that we would/can understand God’s rationale?

As finite beings, living in the infinitely small slice of time we call now, we are limited as to what we can comprehend concerning the infinite.

Anything that you are aware of is finite and therefore not God.

Vice and Virtue

Vice

immoral or wicked behavior.

synonyms:

immorality, wrongdoing, wickedness, badness, evil, iniquity, villainy, corruption, misconduct, misdeeds;

criminal activities involving prostitution, pornography, or drugs.

synonyms:

immorality, wrongdoing, wickedness, badness, evil, iniquity, villainy, corruption, misconduct, misdeeds;

an immoral or wicked personal characteristic.

Virtue

Behavior showing high moral standards.  "paragons of virtue"

synonyms:

goodness, virtuousness, righteousness, morality, integrity, dignity,rectitude, honor, decency, respectability, nobility, worthiness, purity;

 (In traditional Christian angelology) the seventh highest order of the nine-fold celestial hierarchy.

Why did some behaviors become labeled Virtuous and others Vices?  Vice, in general, is illegal but not everything that is against the law is considered a vice.  A vice, even when detrimental to no one but them self, is considered immoral.   Why are vice and virtue morality issues and not just legal issues?

Rationale

noun

a set of reasons or a logical basis for a course of action or a particular belief.

"he explained the rationale behind the change"

synonyms:

reason(s), reasoning, thinking, logic, grounds, sense;  principle, theory, argument, case;  motive, motivation, explanation, justification, excuse; the whys and wherefores "the rationale for offering wireless access was simple"

Vice has no need for a rationale.  Virtue needs a rationale.

Vice is understood without explanation.  Virtue needs an explanation (rationale) to be understood and followed.

Vice is obvious.  Virtue is convoluted.

Because we indulge we can over indulge.  Because we can save we can horde.  Because we can use we can abuse.  Because we can discern the difference between feast and famine we can be gluttonous.

If we cannot attain what we need to live we die.  If we can obtain what we need to prosper and reproduce there may be the opportunity to accumulate more than we need.  If we do accumulate more than we need then we have the opportunity to overindulge (engage in conspicuous consumption – gluttony – excess – extravagance – luxuries – superfluous – hording – abuse – pride – arrogance – egotism – vanity – arrogance – self-absorption) at the expense of others.  Without surplus there cannot be vice.  Without surplus and the ability to think symbolically there cannot be virtue.

Capitalists

The capitalists’ objective is to buy land, buildings, materials, tools and labor, combine them to manufacture a product they can then sell for more than it cost them to make and end up with enough profit to buy more materials and more labor and sell more of their product for a profit ad infinitum or until they have a monopoly on their market so they can simply jack up the price, to add to their profit without using capital.

The capitalists’ number one credo is; use as little capital as possible to make as much profit as possible.  To this end they will buy the least expensive land, build minimal structures, which they then fill with the cheapest equipment available.  They divide the work into the smallest and simplest segments so they can higher the least costly labor (the young and untrained, preferably female workers) who they then provide the absolute minimum education (on the job training whenever possible) who they then equip with the absolute bare minimum of tools and support.  Then they ask their laborers to work at the highest intensity they can manage (even if it is to the detriment of their health, hoping they will die, quit or be forced to quit because they can no longer do the job, before they have to be paid (as highly trained labor) a higher wage) and whenever possible they ask them to work without compensation or benefits.  And all the time wages are maintained at an artificially and unnecessarily low rate to trap the wage earners in their lot so they do not become independent and stop making profit for the capitalist.  The laborers are of no interest to the capitalist after they leave their employ so there is no reason to provide them with a pension.  And it is in the capitalists’ best interest to have a surplus of workers to compete for their jobs which help to keep the wages/benefits as low as possible.  Although the capitalist benefits most from the labor it is the labor class that is then taxed to support those that cannot support themselves and wait in reserve to jump at the chance to be underpaid.

Workers who understand the capitalists’ process/philosophy/credo, work for the highest wage they can with the best benefits.  They work the absolute minimum hours they must to maintain themselves and their dependents for as long as they can and they contribute as much as possible to their retirement.  They do everything within their power to be and stay healthy and refuse to do work that is a detriment to their health or life away from work.  They continue to work for as many years as possible to take advantage of the higher wages and benefits that seniority and well-earned skills afford them.  They never work without adequate compensation.  They demand the best tools, support and education available and they make use of these resources rather than doing other departments tasks.

We Are Not Equal

Living your life by the ‘golden rule’ is problematic.  No matter how you define your terms, and I don’t care what combination of physical, economic, mental, emotional, social, cultural and/or moral scales you use, no two humans can be measured and found to be equal.  We don’t equally desire, we don’t equally appreciate.

In general, idealistic terms, your treating me as you wish to be treated or my treating you as I wish to be treated seems like a very good idea.  But, there is a vast horde of people out there who treat themselves in abusive and/or masochistic or culturally and/or socially specific ways that I don’t want to have anything to do with.  And there are many, who I assume, believe that how I want to be treated is dreadful!  So I think the rule to live by ‘should’ be; “Treat others as they wish to be treated and let others know how you want to be treated.  And if you can’t do this, walk away”.

Your Tools Set You Free

In primitive times, when people were self-sufficient, all they needed came from the land they inhabited.  They took from the land and as they used the resources they took they gave back to the land what they did not use and their waste.  No one will argue that it was a perfect system where all the resources taken were returned to their original spot but it was close.  Now resources are taken from the land, shipped to the factory then shipped again to where they are consumed miles or even continents away and then the wastes are shipped to a land fill.  What was once resources rich land becomes exhausted and what was once pristine becomes fouled by waste.  So is the plight of modern humanity.

Before the age of capitalism, sometime in the 14 or 1500s, humans were dependent on their skills and the skills of those around them for everything from their clothes, food and homes to their safety, companionship and entertainment.  Each person was of value to themselves and those around them.  Now we are only cogs on a wheel or resisters in a computer.  We don’t rely on our neighbors and we interact more with electronics than humans.  We are isolated and ultimately replaceable.  We can change this.  We must escape our isolation and wasted, useless sense of self.

Value comes not just from the time spent to produce.  It also comes from the quality of the materials, the expertise of the crafts man and the dearness to the heart of the product to the consumer.  Skill may be the utmost of worth.  If I can produce a product of superior quality, in half the time it takes you to produce a similar product them I will ask more for the fruit of my labor than you do for yours.  And over time what I can do may increase in value or become valueless.

Capitalists need a surplus of labor to suppress wages.  If contraception and abortion were; without stigma, freely available and affordable, the number of unwanted and unsupportable children would decrease.  And so would the number of surplus workers that the Capitalists need to suppress wages and benefits.  The only path the labor class has to gain the upper hand on the owner class is to reduce the number of workers until laborers become a valued commodity, worth education and keeping healthy.  When laborers are a valued commodity, educating and maintaining the health of the labor class will become a priority for the owner class.  So long as there are more people then jobs there will be no change.

Capitalists want jobs to be so easy that education and a living wage are unnecessary and they want workers so common that the loss of many, can easily be replaced in short order.  As a result of these sentiments capitalists will never support a living wage, education, healthcare and birth control.

If I can make a profit off of something that you destroy (use up) on a regular schedule then my income is made secure.

Your Goal

How you behave is dependent upon your goal.

And your goal may very well justify your means, at least in your mind.

But before you begin your argument supporting your means, I want you to justify your goal.

If your goal is to create wealth it doesn’t matter what path you take.  Your choices will be determined by that goal, not the path.

If your goal is to deliver a product of determined quality then your path is determined by the product and its quality as is your goal.

So what is your goal?

I need to know so I can assess your path.  So I can decide if I want to be on the path with you.

And if I choose to be on your path, how do I wish to act.

We Can

If, in the production of all things,

we are satisfied with a goal of usefulness rather than perfection,

we can do all things.

Me

I am an improbable mote of dust    

that is not noticed

and leaves no trace.

Life is death's Conceit.

It is impossible for life not to exist, 

because it does. 

The universe exists and with it infinite possibilities.

Act as if you will get what you want.

Suicide is a quest for power, 

an attempt to gain control.

I fear those who put ideals before the lives of others.

Life is death's Conceit.  

As light is to dark, 

And hot is to cold, 

Order is temporary.  

I accept disorder and value light.  

In dying I succeed.

You do not need to be more than you are.

A story where everyone who reads every word of a very long book attains an insight that can only be expressed by them to someone else who has read the book.  They can’t tell anyone what they know and they can’t compel anyone to read the book.  So the story is about the coming together of those that have read the book and their relationship at the exclusion of everyone else.

You will make fewer mistakes if you think about what you are doing, 

not about what you are going to do next or what you have done.

We must learn from the past.  

We must plan for the future.  

We must act in the present.  

If you are depressed, 

stop thinking about the past and concentrate on what needs to be done in the present. 

If you are feeling anxious, 

stop considering what you are going to do in the future and do what needs to be done now.

If I spend 100 hours making a ‘things-it’ which no one wants then my labor is of no value.  If I spend 100 hours making a work of art that someone may want then my labor is worth whatever the buyer is willing to pay.  

If I spend 100 hours making a rope belt that most anyone can make then my labor may or may or have value depending upon how lazy and rich and gullible a suitable buyer is.  

If I spend 100 hours working for someone my labor is worth whatever we agreed I will be paid.

In all other animals strength/size determines possession.  

The largest bear gets the best cave.  

Humans have devised a way to invest objects with value so they can be traded.  

The richest human has the best house.

To what extent can we live off materials spontaneously produced by nature?

in itself (An-sich)

out of itself (Anderssein)

in and for itself (An-und-für-sich).

Perfection is the cosmos in a single point that does not change, 

a single point that cannot be divided 

and the empty void.

It makes no sense to think that an alien species 

(sentient individuals from beyond our solar system) 

would use their resources to come here and kill all humans. 

If all the want are raw materials 

and they have the ability to get to what we call Earth, 

they can also get to an uninhabited planet 

that has the same or more appropriate resources than can be found on Earth.  

And they can get those resources without opposition.

If they want to trade with us they are not going to wipe us out.

And if they want us as slaves they will make sure we survive.

Because my life could be worse 

I have hope 

and when all that is left is misery and death 

and all hope is gone 

I have life.

When I am confronted with a goal too large for me to comprehend, 

I do what I feel needs to be done, 

and I do not question the steps.

I am an improbable mote of dust that is not noticed and leaves no trace.

You Are Welcome.

My One Wish

If I had but one wish.  And in that one wish I could have anything at all.  I would wish that all who believe in an afterlife would be taken to something resembling there imagined afterlife immediately.  I would wish that they would disappear from this earth for all time, never to return.  And that no one who believed in an afterlife would ever live here again.

And if the meant that I would stand alone, as the only human inhabitant of Earth for the rest of my days then I would be OK with that.  And if it meant that there would be just be others here on Earth who believe that this is the one and only life they will ever live, I would take my chance with them before I would live as we do now.  Because I believe that the world would be a better place without gods, without belief in gods, without belief in a life after death.

We ain't so smart

Much like the difference between the linear processing used by a computer and the, let’s say ‘holographic’ thought process of the human brain, which has kept computers from out ‘thinking’, read that as processing if you like, us and kept us from having to recognize robots and their computer brains as anything close to human.  The Aliens that have the ability to get to Earth have no reason to recognize us until we get our physics together.  We know a lot about our physical world but a unified theory of physics isn't even on the horizon.  In comparison to alien life forms that have the ability to travel between galaxies we are in physics infancy.  It seems obvious to me that there is a level of physics understanding that has so far alluded us.

The interstellar Aliens may be keeping an eye on us but they probably don’t have to.  Once we figure out physics, come up with the unified theory and start inter galactic travel, it will be obvious that we have ‘come of age’. 

And there is no reason for aliens to ‘take over the Earth’ when there are millions, if not billions of unpopulated, habitable planets out there, for adventurous Aliens that have mastered intergalactic travel, that don’t have the pollution problems they find here.

If we end up killing ourselves off they may wonder down to pick through the rubble, but I doubt it.  ‘There’s nothing to see here folks.  Now just move along.’

Advise

Do not invest in the installation of mega electronics projects, because by the time they are completed they will be obsolete.

Instead invest in small tools that accomplish big things because they are very rare.  In general it takes big tools to accomplish big things.

If you don't like the way something is done search for small tools.

Metaphor

I have been reading "A Kierkegaard Anthology" edited by Robert Bretall.  It's just bits and pieces of stuff SK wrote, put more or less in chronological order, but it is an easy way for me to get a feel for what SK thought.

One selection in the anthology is titled 'Purity of Heart' and in it SK writes: 

"When a man meets his death by drowning, as he sinks, without being quite dead he comes to the surface again.  At last a bubble comes out of his mouth.  When this has happened, then he sinks, dead.  That bubble was the last breath, the last supply of air that could make him lighter than the sea.  So with that remark.  In that remark the last hope of salvation expired.  In that last remark he gave himself up."  

And in the next paragraph he continues:

"But this coolness is still more horrible: that, in the anxiety of death, a man should not cry out for help, "I am going under, save me"; but that he should quietly choose to be a witness to his own destruction!"

I was struck both by how SK described death without salvation and his amazement that it happens.  It seems to haunt him.

I hope you enjoyed my selection.

What If

What if there were no humans, no belief in the infinite, no passion?   Would god exist?  Is belief in god, god’s existence?  Does god exist because someone believes, because someone prays?  Is god’s existence merely subjective faith?  What does the existence of humankind mean to god?

Or is there an objective god and if so what purpose does faith serve?  It seems to me that if there is an objective, all powerful god which created everything, such a god would have had to have been here before time began and surely it would also have to continue to be here once time ends.  An objective, all powerful god should know everything, all that has ever been and all that will ever be.  Or is the objective god limited, evolving, just a more advanced expression of humanity?  And in all that this objective god knows, are there multiple outcomes for my life?  If so, this could mean that there are more outcomes than can be imagined by my, or any other comparably puny human mind.  Or does the objective god only know the one outcome of each life.  Is the single fate of every tree, every dog, every grain of sand, known?  What if your prayers do not amend the outcome of your life?  And if there is an objective god why is faith even an issue?  Why wouldn’t an objective god make itself known and stop sectarian violence?

If there is only one outcome for each life, why pray?  If you pray, you believe in free will and the power of prayer to influence the future.  If there is only one outcome for each life, is prayer merely an avowal of faith to a subjective god?  And if prayer is merely an avowal of faith in a subjective god, doesn’t god already know whether or not you believe and nothing is gained by prayer?  I understand why it is written that praying to a false idle is condemned but I don’t understand why ‘not praying at all’ is also condemned.  Is it because if no one prays, believes, has faith, god ceases to exist?

What if humans, as the only fully rational and self-aware creatures on Earth, are a mistake, an aberration, a miscalculation, a screw up, a fluke, an evolutionary faux-pa, a squinch in a world created for some other purpose, a destructive byproduct, a side effect?  What if rational thought is just an implied space, a side effect of something useful that is in itself destructive and/or counterproductive, an experiment gone badly, if you will?  What if the real purpose of existence is the balance of all life on Earth?  And what if it can only be recovered once all humans are gone?

What if we cannot know if something is true?  How would we know that we do not know and even cannot know truth?  What if truth is more or maybe less than just congruence between what we think and what we experience?  If we can know truth, how would we know that we do know truth?  If facts are true, are there truths that are not facts, subjective truths?  What if it does not matter if we know truth?  What if it does not matter what we believe?  What if it does not matter what we have faith in?

It is one thing to believe in or have faith in something that you know to exist, like “I believe the sun will rise tomorrow”.  But having faith in the absurd; in that which you cannot know to be true, cannot experience, cannot prove, is quite another thing.

One of Ten

"There are perhaps ten people who have the patience to read what I have expounded above, and scarcely one man in the kingdom who would take the trouble to compose anything like it; which last, however, in one way consoles me, for if everybody can do it, if the work is mere routine, contract-writing by the sheet, then it becomes precisely my merit to have done what all can do (this is the humiliating feature of it for the weak human heart), but which no one else cares to do." Soren Kierkegaard CONCLUDING UNSCIENTIFIC POSTSCRIPT TO THE "PHILOSOPHICAL FRAGMENTS"

Faith in the Absurd is Comforting

Believing in an omniscient, ever present being makes life easier.  Belief; steadfast, ever-present belief in god, is a subjective and unchangeable focal point that calms.  This focal point does not vary.  It does not change. It is the constant that can always be counted on.  Without this focal point, life is precarious, unstable, out of control.  Without this subjective focal point there is much to fear.  All can be lost in an instant.  Everything of value, everyone you hold dear can be taken from you without recompense.  In an instant you can be abandoned, alone without subjective faith.