Uncertainty

I go through these phases in life where I will ignore myself for a while so I don't have to deal with my insecurities, and then, when faced with the threat of intimacy and attaching myself to reality, I zoom back into myself.  I find that I devalue myself as a self-protective mechanism against rejection, socially and existentially.  Attaching no value to myself protects me from feeling hurt when others do not attach value to me.  Globally, devaluing myself helps me cope with my perpetual existential crisis; having no existential value makes it easier to deal with the fact that I can't determine any existential value to my life. 

Today, I thought about a lot of things, two of which being myself and my opinion of myself, and Judeo-Christian-Islamic religion. A concept I frequently ponder and discuss is human egocentricity and inevitable narcissism; as my original disclaimer noted, this blog is evidence in itself of this concept.  I suppose I have an inherent feeling that narcissism is a bad thing, that self-service is bad.  Perhaps it was because I was raised in Christianity that I maintain such low self-worth and self-esteem; being raised to believe you are evil is traumatizing, especially as a human with a sense of morality.  Historically, I've sacrificed my own self-love and self-validation for that of others, which became complicated when my search for self-validation turned into affection for those others, who, many times, recognized my behavior at some level and manipulated me to their advantage.  When I realized the extent to which others were using me and manipulating my feelings, I reached one of the lowest points of my life and in an effort to overcompensate, I've completely retracted myself emotionally from others.  I recognize that the only sustainable way for me to feel worthwhile is to validate myself, which I have difficulty doing because of my bleak worldview.

I continue to grapple with the disorderly appearance of the world that my orderly mind perceives.  Human efficiency largely occurs due to the logical nature of our rational minds; however, I am convinced that this rationality and order only exists within the rational human mind.  As an orderly organ, our brains wish to categorize and organize behavior around us.  This attempt is more effective when analyzing the behavior of other rational human beings, whose behavior is the manifestation of an orderly mind.  Things become mucky when our rational minds attempt to organize disorganized events, such as events of weather that kill a lot of people, especially "innocent" people.  Humanity's sense of morality contributes to the distress that results from seemingly senseless phenomena - "bad" things happening to "good" people.  (My mind is gravitating toward a Nietzche-esque exploration of morality, but I shan't digress during this train of thought.)

Objectively speaking, events such as hurricanes and tsunamis and natural "disasters" likely aren't inherently disastrous.  Yes, they may seem to some as disastrous because they frequently cause the deaths of many people and, as I discussed in a previous post, death is the most significant disaster for humans (even to those most devoutly religious, I would wager).  Here is what I can surmise about life: we all die at some point.  Does the point at which we die matter existentially?  Does what we do during our lifetime really matter in the end?  Is there really any reason to inhibit our natural proclivities, whatever those may be, in an effort to achieve some otherworldly status?

I don't know the answers to these questions, if there are answers to them.  Sometimes, I grow frustrated and tired of asking questions, especially about the universe.  The universe doesn't answer my questions.  For some, God and religion answer those questions, but for me, they do not.  Judeo-Christian-Islamic dogma contrivedly answers existential questions.  I suppose I identify myself spiritually as agnostic towards the atheistic end of the spectrum.  I resign to uncertainty, and as a self-declared oblivious entity, I cannot rule out any possibilities, as much as I would like to.  I have a difficult time believing in a God primarily because, independent of other flaws I can identify with the concept, God serves as the order to the disorderly world that our minds so desperately seek.  Perhaps I would have an easier time buying into the idea of God if 1, he weren't depicted as a male [evidence of historical patriarchy that has yet to escape our society], 2, humans weren't made in his image - this is just a projection of human egocentricity at its finest - and, most importantly, 3 - if the concept of God effectively served its purpose in providing order to the world.  Even the most scholarly of theologians cannot reconcile certain ambiguities like natural disasters that affect the "innocent" and babies dying "before their time," and will frequently concede that God is omniscient and wishes things this way or that the character of God is beyond human perception.  It really doesn't cut it for me if this entity that should ultimately validate and explain our existence only does so in certain situations.

My second issue with western religion, and even with eastern religion, is the concept of an afterlife.  For western religions, the afterlife exists after a one-shot life, and, if you did it right, you'll exist in eternal bliss.  For eastern religions, it's more of a battle, and you've got many lives to get it right, at which point, you've reached nirvana and eternal bliss, but it might have taken you a little longer than the western believers.

Let me just throw this little scenario out there.  Let's say I'm myself and I get brutally attacked and murdered by a rapist, ax-murderer.  And let's say for the sake of argument that we're living in a Christian world and my saintly self joins the ranks of heaven after my unfortunate demise, and that this crazy murderer becomes truly repentant, and when he dies, we both inhabit this peachy place called heaven.  Apparently, my soul would have had to have undergone a SERIOUS transformation on the journey from life to the afterlife in order for me to live happily with my murderer in the afterlife.  Maybe it's my own inability to forgive people or the sick feeling I get when I think that what happened in life can so easily be dismissed in an afterlife.  Most importantly, the notion of having consciousness for eternity exhausts me - my consciousness exhausts me and I've only had it for 22 years or however long it has existed in my neurological development up to this point.

I guess the thesis of this post is that I continue in my existential crisis without any foreseeable relief and this persistent uncertainty renders me incapable of self-validation.  This lack of self-validation, in turn, contributes to my continued detachment from life and achievement of happiness.  Bah.

-M.E.