The Courtrooms of Reason

It is another sleepless night. We all know the feeling. The very first time I remember being sleepless was at the age of four-years-old. My sisters slept soundly in adjacent rooms, and I sat wide-eyed and wide awake, awaiting what would come next. It seemed such an odd feeling, going to sleep. Why would we sleep when there was so much to be done? I wanted so badly to draw pictures and play soccer and ride my bike. There was purpose in the day! Why should that cease with the night?

I stared at the dark ceiling with only the dim light of the night light casting its protective glow. Above me shadows waved back and forth with a pace similar to that of waving tree-tops in the wind. As I watched the shadows morph and move, they began to be characterized by evil. They began to hiss and tease and toy with me, and all I could think to do was pull my covers over my head and hope to fall asleep. To no avail… As I unclenched my eyelids I slowly pulled the covers under my nose. And there they were, as if waiting for my emergence. What would such evil beings gain from my torment in the night? What authority do they have over me? Were they to kill me, wouldn’t they have done it by now?

With that I leapt from my bed. I stood amongst them and raised my finger toward the ceiling. “Get out of my house!” I told them. “In the name of God, I cast you out!”

Who knows how long I stood and chanted. Who knows how many sleepless nights I spent casting shadows from my ceilings.

Many ticks the clock has ticked since that night. Many shadows have crawled along my ceilings, and my tents, and my trails. It is hard now to do anything but rationalize each and everything that I see or feel. Sadness can be weakness. Anger can be shortsightedness. Happiness can be ignorance. Shadows on the walls? They are only shadows. The truth is, the character of the shadows in the night will give way to the comfort of the inanimate objects I recognize in the light.

As I look back to the many interesting metaphysical occurrences in my life, I find great ease in the rationalization of such moments. I wonder now if the idea that ghosts and demons do not exist would have been enough to deter my fears and send me deep into sleep. I wonder if it would have mattered at all. If you believe something to be true, how true it can be! As soon as we rationalize our existence and minimalize our experiences to helpless subjectivity, fear of the unknown ceases to be. How could you fear the unknown if the unknown is known? If I know what is under my bed, my fear turns to preparation and action. It is the question of “if” that leaves me to seek the 'is'. If 'it' only 'is' and 'if' always 'isn't,' 'I' only 'am' and cannot 'become.' ‘If’ leaves me to discover. ‘Is’ leaves me only to observe.

But what also must be abandoned should we depart from the unknown? Curiosity? Excitement? If I watch a video of each future wilderness journey, the bubble of my angst and elation is popped with the needle of rationality. This leaves me to wonder, where is the place for rationality? Is it always necessary?

I ponder now what other anomalies I presently rationalize that I did not as a boy. There was a time when I believed in love, in truth, in happiness, in compassion. Not because I understood it, but instead because I felt it and never questioned whether or not it was real. As I saw roadkill I felt sad, as I saw a homeless person I felt compassion. As I saw my parents and my siblings I felt a deep love. These things can be rationalized as instinctual or psychological. I could rationalize to the point where love and compassion does not truly exist, it is merely a response to a herd instinct or genetic sexual preferences. But why would I? I would therefore deprive myself of the very existential pleasures that make me an excited, thoughtful, and curious human-being. Can I not entertain beliefs outside of my realm of understanding because of their irrationality?

Here is the hard truth that we avoid intellectualizing when we make claims that we are either ‘atheist’ or ‘agnostic’ or ‘religious’: There are only two options for our existence— a) If we do not believe in a creator, we cannot then believe in right or wrong because everything we see and know happened as a result of chance. Our decisions only carry consequences equal to the harm they cause to others, and harm to others can be ‘rationalized’ as okay providing the circumstance allows the action. The only ‘rational’ possibility for existence is that everything that has happened or will happen is a domino being tipped by the preceding domino, therefore all life, technology, feeling, or action is only a consequence of what lead up to its occurrence. B) If we do believe in a creator, our rationality must be tapered by our imaginations. If there is a creator and the creator is conscious, the creator must also have intentions, feelings, and actions. Therefore, everything we do or say is the most important thing we will ever do. That means our lives are not just lottery balls bouncing at random. That means that our choices are REAL choices and not just reactions to other reactions reacting to reactions.

A claim that there is no creative force of the Universe is a claim that there is no freedom of choice.  No right and wrong, happiness, sadness, or fear. In essence, that freedom is an illusion and we are all slave to chance. A belief in a creative force of the Universe is the claim that everything has purpose. It grants us responsibility. It grants us authority over our decisions. No means no and yes means yes. There is no such room for ‘it doesn’t matter.’

When I now think back to those shadows on the walls, I feel as though I once saw something that I now cannot see. I saw things through the eyes of more than just a functioning and stable member of a society. I relied on more than what I was taught or how I was taught to think. There was a purity in my naivety. To survive in our world, there is very little room for anything outside our realm of understanding until someone comes to understand it and tells us it is okay to believe it. But by our belief in only rationality and what is ‘known,’ we rob ourselves of so much. Our freedom to love, to be happy, to care. With only what is known and what is rationalized, we are only left with illusions of feelings and no feelings actually exist. If this is true, then so be it. But if you, like me, find no refuge in a world where nothing carries meaning, I believe it necessary to reconsider your stance on the metaphysical. If it is freedom and purpose you seek, it cannot be found in the courtrooms of reason.

Musical Chairs: A Chair for Influence

The way we view our father shapes the entirety of our lives. It is easy enough to make a judgement on the character strengths and weaknesses of those around us should we have the mind to be at least minimally attentive to others. Despite our ability as adults and conscious individuals to make decisions on how we act and how we are perceived, the way we treat ourselves and others is often rhythmic. If we conduct personal experiments on our own mannerisms, thought patterns, and interactive patterns, we will undoubtedly find that many of them can be directly correlated to our parents. This is not some abstract and revelatory phenomena, but it is deeply weighted nevertheless. How parents treat their children, the value they place on their roles within their lives, and the degree of conscientiousness with which they approach their roles in their children’s lives not only effects themselves and their children, but also every single person they interact with throughout their life. How you act will most certainly effect how they treat their kids, and their kids after them. Generation upon generation has the potential to project aspects of your personality exponentially through time. Therefore, there are few responsibility’s greater than that of a parent. 

So, what is the role of a father? It seems these days that our ‘roles’ as individuals are under attack. It may be more modern and appealing to act as if all the ‘roles’ that were once delegated to us by our birthplace, our gender, or our living circumstances are only societal constructs, but in observance of the natural world this claim can be easily debunked. The role of every species on the planet is hyper impactful to each respective occupied ecosystem. So much so that if a single organism were to be extirpated, the identity of an entire living space can be altered.

In our ecosystem, the ‘nuclear family’ comes to mind when many of us imagine a good and functional living space. I have no interest in the variety of opinions that may arise if I were to exemplify the role of each character within the ‘nuclear family,’ but I do think each character has an important role. Even greater, I believe their role is often not a matter of choice, instead it is inherited naturally by the above stated conditions (birthplace, gender, living circumstances, etc.). Each role is integral to the functionality of the home and the eventual budding of the children within the home. A good husband and father, in my opinion, should carry the following responsibilities:

To his wife—He would be a leader, not a dictator. He would be kind, gentle, vulnerable, and honest. He would be attentive, respectful, and present. He would be strong, watchful, and protective. He would not choose friends, sports, or even work over his wife. He would always have an ear to listen and would not relinquish that responsibility to in-laws, friends, or predatory men. He would always be selfless, chivalrous, virtuous, and always at least attempt romance. He would take his role as man of the household seriously and would hold an expectation of himself and of his wife to continually push one another to be flawless, despite a guaranteed failure at such a task. There would be no woman in the world more important to he than her. Even as they grew old, less attractive, and every story had been told and heard to an infinite extent, he would be interested in all the details of who she was and who he transformed into through her. 

It is easy enough to break down how a couple should coexist by simplifying it to “loyalty and communication,” but a man can be loyal to his wife despite his lust of another. He can communicate his disgust with her and eventually they can communicate a divorce. Choosing to be a husband is a commitment for your life. If you do not value that commitment, you should save your knee, skip over the fancy diamonds, and keep hunting at the club. There are women out there who might enjoy your lack of discipline and dependability. If you are not yet a man, do not trick a woman into believing that you are.

It is important to note what a good husband is before attempting to explain what a good father must also be, because they go hand-in-hand. The way a man treats the mother of his children will eventually be mimicked by his son’s and daughters. It is also important because if the husband plays his role adequately, one of the two stabilizing pillars of the household is in place. To commit to marriage, sex, and parenthood is a demanding commitment that requires both parents carrying their load. If both pillars are in place, there is still no guarantee that a child will excel in society. Since this is the case, it takes both parents to consistently evaluate their strengths and weaknesses while working together to uphold the home. Only this will give your child the best possibility of success. No amount of love, coddling, spoiling, punishment, or freedom will compensate for attentiveness, discipline, and leadership in your child’s life. Likewise, a good husband provides everything necessary for a wife to be equally good. If she is not, then at least he will have held his end of the bargain. If she carries the necessary traits of a good wife and he does not match her commitment, the imbalance is a product of his error.

To his children— He would be attentive and present. He would be knowledgeable and therefore wise. He would not rely on aggressiveness and fear to earn respect, but instead on patience, integrity, and truth. He would do as he says and direct his children to do the same. He would direct his sons to treat women with respect and stand up for them. He would direct his daughters to not rely on men for happiness or confidence. He would never outsource his protective responsibilities and would always be engaged in the development of his children’s intellect and talent. He would always encourage his kids to fulfill their potential but never encourage their affliction. He would be forthright about his mistakes, ask for forgiveness when needed, and most importantly learn from them. 

While it may be easy to say a father should ‘be there’ for his children, it is important to know the difference between watching them spiral out of control and being there to wipe their tears, and being there to recognize their missteps and find the best way to help them navigate challenging terrains. While it may seem obvious that he must ‘protect’ his children, its invaluable to recognize that protecting them from the reality of the world is not actually protecting them. In reality, what they don’t know will hurt them. He must be honest and he must not be silent in their turmoil.

I do not spend time attempting to describe how he will achieve each of these traits, because every man is different, and every child is different. How a father might react to one child over another may differ depending on the child’s personality and the father’s capability of having an impact on the child’s behavior. While it may not be easy to understand how to react to your children’s inevitable struggles, it is far easier when he carries the traits detailed above.

It is not to say women and mothers are incapable of offering these traits. We often find that people with particularly strong characteristics may fill the role of the opposite sex better than the average. A mother may very well carry many or all of these traits to an extent, but biologically speaking she may be more well-versed in nurturing and attending to her children’s personalities and feelings more effectively than that of a father. A mother has carried her children in her womb for nine months. Her connection with them and understanding of their individuality has the capability of being much deeper than that of the father, who’s duty in the pregnancy is along the lines of stability for the mother. 

I am not a father. I am not a husband. I am not a lot of things at this point in my life, but some day, god willing, I will be. With that said, when I see things like men mistreating women, children not thinking critically, teenagers feeling unimportant and disassociated with those around them, I see a manifestation of poor parenting. I recognize this because I have mistreated women (including my mother), I have been misled, and I have felt unimportant and disassociated. It is not to say that my father is responsible for my shortcomings, but rather that I recognize what roles could have been played in my life as a child that could potentially have deterred those faults. Additionally, I see these faults in young men surrounding me and know that many of them could be corrected by having a sufficient and consistent leader in their life. 

This is a pivotal time for mankind. Valuable truths have blossomed within modern Western culture, and equally many valuable truths have been disavowed and are at risk of extirpation. For the health and prosperity of the human ecosystem, the ‘role’ of the father and the man must not be underestimated, devalued, or destroyed. It is too important. It is too prevalent. From Kim Kardashian to mass shootings, voids in leadership, attentiveness, authenticity, and virtue are quickly filled with the opposite. Like a game of characteristic musical chairs, the exemplifications of how to act, how to be, and who to be are floating around, waiting for a chance to land in the minds of our future generations. The characteristics you value now may grow to have an impact long after your death. When your children look to you, who and what will they emulate? When the music stops, what character roles will you fill?

A Ransom for Truth

It is an odd and uncomfortable time to be alive. As a species we are either in a period of ethical transformation or ethical evolution and it is unclear which of these is actually the case. It is indeed unlikely to have the acute awareness to be both conscious of the current state of mankind’s relations with ethics while simultaneously cognizant of its direction, but one thing to me seems clear: it is a slow and painful process to endure, it seems to move laterally, and we die before we are given the chance to witness a pinnacle. While I tend to live a moderately optimistic life, I find myself concerned that society as a whole understands the “what I feel about this” portion of consciousness, but not the “why this is.” It is a fear that we get caught in the crosshairs of a battle between objective truth and subjective truth; as a repercussion, truth is held hostage by our volatile emotions.

            To set a parameter from which this essay can be carved, it must first be concluded that truth does exist and is not subject to perspective. Before there were telephones, airplanes, social media, and virtual reality (oh boy…), the thought of these being within the realm of scientific probability was likely laughable. Despite their laughability, their capability to exist and the truth of that very capability never wavered, it was only yet to be discovered. Despite our current outward social musings of ‘what is true?’, truth still exists without our interpretations. While the self-helping tendencies of our society may state that each of us need to “find our truth” or “recognize we are enough,” the fact-of-the matter is that “our” truth is watered down by “our” feelings. We are not enough. If we were, there would be no need to achieve anything greater than birth. Science is incomplete, we are incomplete, and our understanding of truth is incomplete. Truth still exists.

            While awareness of self and feeling is a gift to be cherished, it could also be regarded as a burden. If it were not for moments of joy and excitement, life would be a continuous momentum of discomfort, stringing together a path of suffering and confusion, climaxing with our death. The continual event of individual discontent shared by all humans drives us to both innovation and dehumanization alike. Our awareness of ourselves within our kingdom walls can either propel us to build them greater or compel us to undermine them at the core. To achieve this, we sacrifice virtuous constructs in order to appease a never-ending flow of discontent.

            If consciousness is awareness of self and feeling on a moment-to-moment basis, then it could be argued that most humans only flirt with consciousness and never adequately develop means for consistently valuing the importance of themselves or their actions. In many ways, an objective perspective on human consciousness could determine that only a measure of us truly achieve awareness of the “why” in our actions while a greater portion of us only act in accordance to the fleeting comfort of our emotions. To put that in perspective, an ant may carry sticks and pebbles to its colony because it is wired to do so, not because it has chosen to or not to; a human may choose to work at a factory to afford a vacation or a new car, never truly knowing why it wanted the car or questioning the impact they are to have while working at the factory; another human may recognize the impact of their actions and feel empathy or anger towards one another or an entity, but never look at the big-picture with appropriate objectivity so as to act responsibly; or a human may look at things or events, evaluate their importance or lack of, determine how they feel about them after considerable evaluation, then choose to act in an effective and calculated manner. To simplify even further, levels of consciousness could be boiled to four distinct states: instinctual (driven by instinct), apathetic (driven by reward), cognizant (contemplative but potentially blinded by subjectivity), and disciplined (contemplative and virtuous).

This manifests itself in how we handle ourselves (or don’t) within our society to a great extent. It takes no courage for an ant to act on its instinctual reasoning, if an ant has any capacity to reason. It takes very little courage to work an uninteresting career and have a minimal positive impact in your existence, but instead to do exactly as you’re told and never question why. It takes a bit of courage and a good bit of intellect to challenge the pillars of civilization and the moral structures which guide our laws and authority. However, in my view the greatest measure of intellectual courage is to recognize what you’re doing, ask yourself why you’re doing what you’re doing, question authority and challenge the boundaries of right and wrong, and still do what is right, no matter what the consequences are to your subjective reasoning. It is the difference between an open mind with an open mouth, and a disciplined mind with a disciplined tongue. It means that we recognize our feelings as fleeting and often misleading, and act within virtuous parameters at all cost, no matter the consequence. It means we reinforce the staples of virtue that fulfill the greatest version of ourselves, and do not live by the lie of our intuitions. No matter what the continually fluctuating moral trends dictate or how much social reward is granted through activism or rebellion, your state of virtue remains steadfast. Furthermore, our personal virtues are not a point to be made and an opinion to be heard, but a highly refined description of who we are and how we conduct ourselves.

We find ourselves in a peculiar moment in time. Everything is in front of us; from economics, God, gender, liberty, and ultimately truth, all the intricacies of ethics are under the contemplative microscope of the liberal West. Every imaginable moral conflict is cooking within the ovens of our educational, governmental, scientific, and religious institutions—and the table is set. It’s easy to recognize genocide, enslavement, and blatant oppression. But there remains a subtle and invaluable measure of courage in our seeking and standing for what is true. Moral issues as basic as how we treat someone we disagree with, how we handle failure, or even greater; how we combat our own patterns of emotional bias as they obstruct us from what is right. Moral decisions are rarely as recognizable as confronting malevolent dictatorships. Instead, they are day-to-day, moment-to-moment decisions. Decisions that impact more than just your social standing. Decisions that cannot be summarized by YouTube “gotcha” moments or silly lopsided memes. There is no cost too great that should drive us to cease in our defending of virtue. There is no virtue too small to be brushed under the colorful rug of subjectivity.

Walking With Leppers

Every day we encounter multiple instances when our ethics are put to a test. Whether it be kindness to the person driving ten miles under the speed limit in the fast lane, or not telling your boss they are full of shit, there is no shortage of circumstance in which we are given an option of treating a situation gracefully or errantly. Of the times we treat situations errantly, only a portion of those render negative consequences. Of the negative consequences, only a portion of those bring your character into question to others. If only a fraction of potential ethical missteps actually result in negative consequences, at what point in the process do we assume accountability? Where is the entry point of misconduct. Is it in thought, action, or consequence?

 When the word ‘sin’ is used, a majority of conversational avenues become closed. It is either because a) a person is committing a particular sin being referenced in said conversation and has no interest in admitting fault to their actions (when your Aunt says sex before marriage is sinful at a family reunion, but you and your girlfriend have three kids), or b) a person doesn’t believe in the verb ‘sin’ because he/she holds the belief that all actions are neutral, that there is no governing force of morality, and that all morality is simply a matter of perspective. If either of these are the case than there is no basis for making the proclamation that there is any such thing as an immoral act, therefore something as heinous as ‘sexual misconduct’ is only determined on a societal level and only wrong based on circumstance. While that may be true, and there is no scientific evidence to refute that claim, it leaves a major gap for excusing people for their shortcomings.

                While situational morality is something I don’t believe in, I also understand how easily it can be to find yourself determining how you feel about the actions of yourself or someone you admire based on your feelings of affection toward yourself or someone you admire. For example, when it comes out that a politician has been convicted of sexual misconduct, I find myself easily saying “throw them to the hounds”, but when someone I admire like Louis C.K. is exposed for behaving inappropriately toward women, I find myself looking for the easiest escape route, hoping to avoid making a moral judgement about his character. A frustrating example comes to mind when people who consider themselves politically left or right harshly criticize or attempt to downplay politicians who face allegations of misconduct (either sexual or other) as long as it is politically convenient at the time (cough cough Roy Moore/Bill Clinton).

                When you make a moral judgement as to the credibility of ones’ character based on instances of misconduct (sin) you are making what could be described as an evolutionary decision, based on its potential consequences to you or your family in its recurrence. In other words, if someone you know borrows money from you but fails to pay you back, you would be wise to no longer lend money to the individual. If you continued to do so, you would most certainly lose all your money, as the lack of remorse that individual had toward their neglect of repayment would provide them no ethical consequence for having never repaid their debts. In terms of survival only, it is never in our best interest to lend anyone money, or provide charity in any way. Scientifically, the only benefit to regarding sin as existent is in terms of its consequences on our survival. But if that’s the case, is there an evolutionary benefit to charity, grace, or forgiveness?

                The argument could be made that the dopamine release response to an act of charity is an evolutionary benefit. You could claim that the act of forgiveness relieves you of any negative and potentially harmful harbored feelings toward another, or that maintaining a relationship with someone who plays an important role in your well-being is worthwhile evolutionarily. But do either of these benefits outweigh the benefit of having never committed an act of charity? Scientifically, ethics are cold, brash, and baseless.

                The idea of ‘sin’ is simple, yet nowadays its nearly a sin just saying the word itself. It does, however, require that you view morality as something more than just determined by circumstance, and it also assumes that there is such a thing as free will. Of course our relation to sin as it aligns to religion is that it is the antithesis of Gods will and is a tool for Satan’s stranglehold on your spiritual well-being, but there is a more secularly digestible format in which to understand its significance— It is the idea that all animals on this planet commit acts of atrocity toward one another either reactionarily (emotionally) or instinctually in the name of survival—but humans are the only animals (that we can prove) have a recognition of these actions, their effect on others, the consequences they have on our own life, and an ability to make a conscious decision to deny these actions despite our emotions or instincts. (House pets, which humans trained, being the only exception.) At its core, the idea of sin is that we are given an opportunity to make a choice to do either right or wrong, and we choose to do wrong. We can make claims of other species' decision making based on ethics, but we cannot accurately determine whether it is based off of a moral code, or because it is evolutionarily advantageous. In the sense that there is provable, testable ethical decision making, we stand alone.

                While that isn’t so hard to understand (assuming you can first admit there is such a thing as right and wrong and that free will does indeed exist), the people who tend to use the term ‘sin’ in our society, most commonly, come across as judgmental, causing a reasonable defiance of their belief system and throwing out the simple idea that there is indeed a wrong way of dong things. There are many consequences on a societal level of dismissing the notion of sin—variations in a common right and wrong, denial of any right and wrong, lack of accountability for misconduct, etc. But what has caught my eye most recently is the magnification of sins committed by those whom we disagree with but disregarded when acted out by those who seemingly share rudimentary and convenient values with us. (politicians, actors, athletes. Friends, family, ourselves.)

                The flaw begins with the idea that it is our actions that define our character. That we can say one person is a “good” person because they have committed no obvious harmful actions, and another is “bad” because they have. You can never gain anything from judging a human or any other animal on this planet solely on their actions, nor would you be wise to be caught by surprise when a human or animal acts in a way that you deem immoral or unjust. While it may be evolutionarily beneficial to make a judgement as to potential action, there is no gain from judging their character wholly and independently based on actions. If you judge them only on past actions, you leave no room for the potential of reform. If a vicious wolf is kept in a cage and cannot bite you, does it cease to be vicious? If Hitler were to live a life of anti-Semitism, racism, and overall hatred, but were to have never stumbled upon the resources to act on his malice, would he then be a good man with incredible speech-making ability and leadership skills?

                No matter the nature of your upbringing, your career, your deicisions, or your actions, you are guaranteed to encounter thoughts and actions in yourself that you know are contrary to the well-being of your character. It is in our animalistic nature, even as children, to feel hatred, lust, jealousy, or malcontent. We feel this inevitably at some point within out lives. It is merely a matter of catching these inherent qualities as they occur, choosing not to act on them, and making an attempt to correct the soiled thought process that ushered their occurence before it becomes habitual. Worst case scenario, they continually occur and the inner-warfare of ethical thought continues with them. Best case scenario, they become secondary reactions This in itself is no grand statement or revelation in human psychology, but it does reveal a crucial point that is scientifically observable about sin.

                  Sin begins with thought. Bad actions are a product of bad thought. Good actions are not always a product of good thought, but rather a disregard for bad thought. It is an ugly reality, but it is a reality. The ability to do wrong dwells at the core of all of us as living creatures on this earth. The ability to recognize that, refuse to act on it, and work intently on redirecting and limiting those ill-thoughts is a beautiful opportunity that should not be taken for granted. And when it comes to making a judgement on another’s actions, recognizing their remorse, and eventually forgiving them for their actions, understanding the nature of sin within all of us (atheist, agnostic, religious, or whatever identity you lay claim to) makes for an easy point of reference. A point of reference necessary for understanding first the potential for sin in yourself, the potential for sin in others, and the ability to combat it and eventually conquer it.
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Half Empty

In 2003, the worldwide phenomenon of social media was brought to the light of public eye. After meddling with email, instant messaging boards, and the beginning stages of text messaging, society took a new leap (or some might say stumble) and a new tool of self-expression, Myspace, was created. A year later, Facebook lassoed our attention spans, and a year after that, Twitter. Eventually, a few years later, Instagram took hold, shortly followed by Snapchat.

While social media is most definitely a valuable tool to interact in many ways, it seems to unfortunately bring out, not only the worst in many of us, but also the most childish. It can often be used for pictures and quick statements. Initially, most of us were sold on the idea that it would be a 21^st century way of interacting with distant friends or relatives. Now somehow it mirrors a loneliness and lack of quality thought that I might have never known ran so rampantly within our peers. It serves as a panic room for our most exaggerated fears, a mediator for groups in disagreement to jab at one another, and it allows people who might never meet to provide either discouragement or affirmation of ideas. Within its first fifteen years of public access, it has become the center of many of our paradigms. A stop-gap for our own loneliness, lack of voice in social situations, and in many cases, a platform to illustrate our own mental misfiring’s publicly.

………….

When a bachelor cooks a meal he cooks for himself. When he shops he shops for one, and when he eats he gets his fill, assuming he has the time to finish his food. He may walk through the grocery store and find himself stricken by sadness at the family in the aisle beside him with the screaming children and the overburdened parents. Maybe the parents are well-off. They buy a mixture of healthy name brand foods and late-night junk food for the teenagers staying up late fiddling their fingers on an X-Box control pad—maybe they are pulling out the food stamps and divvying out calories evenly. Packages of block cheddar cheese, frozen apple juice, fat free milk, a tub of peanut butter, a couple cartons of eggs, and a box of Ramen Noodles might occupy the space around the child squatting in the grocery cart.

                The bachelor may find company with his friends. On a better night, he may find himself drunken on the dance floor with a girl he hardly knows who shares the same quiet yearning and emptiness as he. They may hope both of their negatives can converge to form a positive. They shuffle into a group of young people once regarded as “the future” of our species. Every adult had once warned them about the sharpness of a cold reality, which they now dull by gluttonous alcohol intake and slurred conversations about social justice and the nature of ethics. 

“Adulthood” used to have a grandiosity attached to it. It used to sparkle and glisten with the naivety and excitement only observed through the blissful eyes of the inexperienced. Like a Christmas present under a tree to a child, wrapped neatly are the contents of independence, freedom, and self-reliance. As a child you believe that once unpackaged it would most certainly be the key to a revelation of purpose and calling—right? Instead it was five days of hitting snooze on the alarm clock, sitting in traffic, getting stuck at the same intersections, cursing your career choice (or lack-of), all leading to a reward of mindless indulgences disguised as “youth”, which scientifically relate to an animalistic need for spreading your DNA in hopes to achieve some sort of physical immortality in the form of genetics.

Is this all?

The bachelor may never feel sadness when he sees the family beside him. He may only quickly glance over, only to continue his life the way it was as he entered the store. It is of course very likely he may go home, stare at his Facebook feed, engage in a dead-end debate with someone who disagrees on how we interpret the 2^nd amendment, and find himself in a technology fueled half sleep. It lasts seven hours, until the alarm breaks the slide show of random imagery telling stories of seemingly miscellaneous interactions and events that either happened, will happen, did not happen, or happened in a fashion entirely different than he had perceived in the time of its occurrence.

As the word “dream” drifts through his mind, his day dream ends, and his work continues. He sits in traffic on the way home and the dream lives on. It’s a dream of a new road, a new scene, a new city, a new apartment, a new girlfriend. Maybe a dream of the purity he once felt as a child staring at that present under the tree. It seems now as though when he had opened the seemingly innocent gift, the powers it granted him overtook him. His lack of preparation for the responsibility that comes with that big word “adulthood” seem to place him consistently behind the eight ball in his life, and what may now be “youth” and was once “childhood” will soon be “elderly” and eventually “deceased.”

Is this all?

If he were to have felt sadness while sitting in this grocery line it could have been either a sadness for the parents or an envy at their life. In all likelihood whichever it was, it was probably a little bit of both. He probably hasn’t the capacity of on-the-spot sensitivity to recognize what he feels. If he feels indifferent to his surroundings in the monotony of the moment, he suffers from the same ailment as if he were to feel sadness. Oddly enough, however, if he could suddenly uncover a hidden capability of reading another’s mind he might see that he is not alone in this ailment. What seems like jealousy, indifference, contentment, or sadness is actually rampant amongst the fellow shoppers. He might see that the family beside him is struggling financially, or maybe that they have so much money they’ve lost touch with necessity and recognition of each other. He might see that not only the father and mother feel this, but so do the children. He might turn and see that this is common with the customer in front of him, behind him, the one walking out the door, and even the cashier.

“Is this all?” They might all be asking. He might realize that it is not only he who desires more, but everyone he encounters.

The truth is none of us have ever or will meet someone who has it all figured out. The beauty of the human state is that we have such variety in temperament, feeling, personality, circumstance, and potential decisions. We are all within a spectrum of imagining and reimagining ourselves, how we view each-other, and how we view the world around us. We are in a constant state of coming and going, our society is evolving at a faster rate with each passing decade than it ever has prior, and every decision we make has deep implications for the future of us all and the generations to come.

Somehow we require so little of our interactions with each-other. For some reason far beyond my understanding, we have an entirely too low standard for those who’s views we align with our own. And for those whom we disagree, we meet on a hypothetical never-ending battlefield of social media and major networks. We gallop on the backs of bandwidth, wielding keyboards and shallow acronyms as our weapons of choice. But it is not our divisive opinions that are slaughtered in the process, instead it is our wit, integrity, and our responsibility as adults to lead our brothers and sisters of the human race, as well as the generations of keyboard wielding warriors to come.

Most importantly, however, we have very little requirements in the extent to which we achieve our max capacity as highly intelligent and capable beings on an individual level. We instead stoop our intellect to a level just above Chimpanzee. We exist just enough to pay the bills or buy into (or simply purchase) an excess of attractively packaged mindlessness that contributes nothing to either our evolutionary or spiritual character. Our society, science, and technology moves at such a pace that it could develop an ability to harness its own intelligence before we ever give ourselves the chance to recognize the potential of our own. Many of us have no intent to provide any contributions to our own well-being, let alone our families’, fellow countrymen’s, our species’, or planets. We dwell within our own contentment, malcontent, or envy so deeply that our thoughts and actions are immovably shallow.

This is not all.

It is not some peculiar and unfamiliar challenge we face. It is a problem of having a glass capable of holding eight ounces of water that is rarely filled past four ounces. It is not a problem of capacity, it is a problem of substance. Many of us have no problem talking, though nearly all of us portray ourselves as disinterested in consciously listening. It seems we poor the glass out before we can fill it up. While it could be simply labeled as a lack of thought put into individual actions, it is more a lack of quality thought, which is not insurmountable. We all desire more from ourselves, whether we recognize it or not. When we do not strive to grasp the reigns of our own pursuit, we find ourselves offering our inadequacies as reflections of ourselves in interaction.

Often, I thought this was solely a product of poor parenting. It is not. I could claim it is a lack of education, but I would still likely be wrong. And while those are most definitely contributing factors, improvements in those avenues and others like them only assist in preparation for the contents of the neatly wrapped gifts of “adulthood”. Adulthood is an achievement, much like old age. independence, freedom, and self-reliance are absolutely something to be excited about within your adolescence. But they are in themselves gifts earned through experiences who wield power, requiring responsibility, accountability, rational thinking, humility, and truth. Without these accompanying traits we are all bound to the slavery of our own pathl

essness and insufficiency.

When we get to the point of being an adult, we must require a base level of attentiveness and self-awareness from ourselves and each-other. After all, as a child, you aspire to have those characteristics in your back pocket as an adult. We are not victims of social media. It is not the inventions fault that we are disinterested in interacting with each other in an adultlike and responsible manner. Every one of us is capable of contributing more to the pot of human interaction than we put forth, and it is the pursuit of fulfilling those capabilities that will drive us away from the strife and divisiveness we encounter on these platforms. The gaps in our own mental, physical, and spiritual development are waiting to be filled by our desire to listen, learn, and grow—not to be exemplified by hatred and discouragement towards our brothers and sisters. We are capable of more. We are called for more.

We use the word “dream” to describe aspirations, but our aspirations for our own lives are far from measly dreams. They are not abstract and filled with miscellaneous content outside of our ability to guide. They are not theoretical and frail, able to be crumbled by circumstance or obstacles. They are attainable, they exist in all of us, and it is one of the great and exciting opportunities of life that we be granted the “gift” of pursuit. Find your capacity and exceed it. Fill your cup. It deserves all eight ounces of your being, not four. You aren’t chained to your job, you aren’t chained to your apartment, and the life you live now can ALWAYS be enhanced. As long as you are alive you can dream. As long as you can dream you can achieve. 

True North

Everyone has an independent view on morality it seems. Often, we break it down with such detail that we break it down to nothing. We think of morality as subjective or based on the culture— the values of the men and women who subscribe to Sharia Law will be different than the values of a gay atheist living in Portland, OR. We think of morality as scriptural— we get our values based on religious doctrines and we let them be the compass for how we perceive a “good” life to be in ourselves, and where we draw boundaries within our own culture or personal relationships. And many of us, including myself at one time in my life, believe morality to be essentially an illusion— a complete fabrication constructed by early humans to maintain order in a normally barbaric and inhumane early society.

In life you may find yourself directionless from time to time. You will without any uncertainty find yourself in circumstances that present themselves to you unexpectedly that you have not had adequate time to evaluate. Therefore, you may find yourself going through with unexpected and highly impactful decisions based on erraticism or instinct. In each of these situations our personal set of morals and values collide with our innate reactionary instincts, and we make our decisions either within our personal definitions of right and wrong, or we make decisions with our animal instincts— our ‘fight or flight’ reflex.

It’s important for us to know that when we view morals or personal values, they are not dependent on circumstance. If we allow circumstance to be a deciding factor in how we define morality than the boundaries of morality are in a constant state of fluctuation and redefinition. If, for example, we use the well-regarded value of commitment— we can agree commitment is either existent or it is not. You are not half-committed to something. You may make the claim that you are, but on a moment-to-moment basis you are either committed or you aren’t. If an alcoholic is committed to no longer drinking, he wouldn’t then only drink on Friday nights. He doesn’t leave himself a place for his commitment to sobriety to be on hold until the next day. That would be an example of being committed Saturday through Thursday, failing in your commitment on Friday, and recommitting on Saturday once again. If you are committed to getting in shape and you decide you are going to take a week off training and eating healthy, you are foregoing your commitment that week.

Commitment to yourself is an easy step to take. I can discipline myself for eating a piece of cake when I’m on a no-sugar diet and move on easily. The problem presents itself when we add extreme circumstance to the scenario—'I made a commitment to my wife when we were married that we would be together, as one body, through sickness and through health, until death do us part. I then found out she was cheating on me with a close friend of mine, so we were divorced.’ It’s easy to say that a man or woman who was wronged in a marital situation with something such as infidelity or abuse should feel no guilt to leave the relationship, and in many cases that is the best option or them at the time. But does that mean the value of commitment suddenly isn’t important? The circumstance doesn’t devalue commitment, the vow of commitment is broken due to the circumstance. In other words, the choice to cheat or the choice to divorce doesn’t make the value of commitment cease to exist because of the circumstances, it is simply disregarded. In this case, it may be best for the spouse who was wronged to get themselves out of the situation and recommit to themselves, maybe giving an opportunity to someone else who values commitment as much as they do. But it doesn’t excuse a situation in which two people disregarded their supposed valuing of commitment.

This particular value (commitment), even with its circumstantial contradictions, is an easy target to exemplify because most people and most cultures can agree upon its importance. And even when it comes to the example of divorce, some people may disagree with me, but most would be able to easily see how I or someone else could cling to that principle. You see, however, as you dig into more controversial examples that hit closer to home in modern day Western culture (homosexuality, wartime murder, abortion… etc.), how the topic can provide a very hard and slow-moving conversation with little give on either side. The reason, once again, is that we cloud our definitions of right and wrong with circumstance and emotion.

It especially becomes challenging when we enter ‘love’ and ‘compassion’ into the equation, because we often think to love or feel compassion for someone is to condone their actions. But does a parent who loves their child condone their child disobeying them? To punish your child, or even to allow your child to receive the natural punishments issued as a result of their actions, does not mean you don’t have love or have compassion for your child. It means quite the opposite. Your understanding of the consequence of their actions is superior to theirs, so it becomes your responsibility to present (or allow it to be presented) that which they do not know or understand.

 At first glance when you see the word ‘condone’ you might think just because you allow something, it doesn’t mean you condone it. “I don’t condone a woman’s choice to abort their child, I just believe it’s her body and her right.” The fact of the matter is, by definition, to condone is not only to allow but to also approve of. If you think that a child in the womb that is in its earliest stages of development, it does not have a pulse, and likely has yet to develop an affinity for ‘love’ and ‘compassion’, is not by your meaning ‘living’ enough for you to condone its preservation, then by all means, condone abortion. But if anything in you believes that even at the earliest stages of its development it is ‘alive’, then you are condoning the taking of a life due to circumstance. And we should all agree, taking a human life is not worth condoning.

You can go on endlessly with different circumstances and excuses for right and wrong, and an intelligent person will be able to refute the idea of its existence fairly easily. But I would be remised if I did not acknowledge a great possibility and likelihood that our conscience is not merely shaped situationally, but something much deeper than physical circumstance. It would be shortsighted in my belief to assume that something as serious as the taking of a life, or even something as basic as not being true to your word, would be a value that could vary if I were to travel to a part of the world where it was not common. If that were the case, then any set of even the most unimaginable wrongs (rape or molestation, mass murder… etc.) could be circumstantial and left up to interpretation. If that were the case than we are no different than our barbarian ancestors who more resembled beasts than the inventive, creative, compassionate, and unselfish homo sapiens we imagine ourselves to be now.

The idea that morality is not a victim of circumstance is not a new idea. All of the world’s major religions subscribe in some way to a belief that morality is endowed spiritually rather than physically developed. However, we often couple our disregard of their respective doctrines with a disregard of their moral teachings because they are outdated. “To implement the Old Testaments book of Deuteronomy into modern society would move morality backwards.”  To the naked eye, I can completely understand that. And I could write another two-thousand words in defense of Old Testament teachings as they relate to New Testament in the Christian Bible. I could write another about the immoral implications of religion coinciding with government and limiting freedom of choice.  To elaborate on either would distract from the overall point:

Morality is concrete. Just as a compass will direct us to the gravitational North of the earth, the magnetic pole of the earth will always change, but the northernmost axis will always occupy the same spot in relation to the sun, despite what a compass tells us. Our relationship with our moral guidelines do not deviate from their truth because of circumstance and it is our job as citizens to reinforce our inner morality. In a perfect world we could point to others and say “that is wrong!” and in some cases that is necessary, but it must first take place on an individual level. We must first recognize we as individuals are not bigger than the morals that guide us. We change, the world around us changes, the circumstances we come up against evolve as our species evolves—but that does not mean the value of community, love, charity, discipline, forgiveness, honor, truth, and the scariest of all, accountability, are to evolve as well. It is our moral ‘true north’ that elevates our being to a level not shared by any other living organism discovered up to this point. If morals are to evolve, than we have lost what got us to this point in the first place.

Pack Weight

If we were to itemize the things of greatest value in our lives we would nearly all answer our family and friends. Maybe we would be more specific and answer something along the lines of ‘my relationship with my kids’ or ‘time spent with loved ones.’  

                While it may be true that these are in fact the things that mean the most to us, the answer would most certainly be different if we were to rephrase the question: “if your house was burning down, what items would you grab on your way out?” Then your answer may change to something of sentimental value; a photo album, a letter from your wife in high school, maybe your record collection… You could also ask what are the most monetarily valuable things in your home? You may answer your TV, your furniture, your jewelry.

                Where it becomes interesting is if you were to be asked the question in third person: “What does your brother value most?” When you look at what another person may value most you find yourself categorizing it in a different way. Instead of viewing items or relationships with attachment to a specific world view or emotion, you begin to measure value by the things said person seems to have a particular interest in or the ways an interest can consume their life.

                “Take what you need and leave what you don’t” I’d say to myself if I knew I would be hiking twenty miles a day through mountainous terrain. If I knew I had to carry every item of ‘value’ on my back with every step I took, the light in which I view what is valuable would be quite different. I might instead value the basic necessities like food, clean water, warmth, and shelter.

 Its often stated when someone ventures off on a hike or even a vacation that they just want to ‘escape it all.’ The, for lack of a better word, value in hiking or camping is that you detach yourself from the burdens and weight of every day life that we seem to habitually carry. How can you receive work emails or phone calls if you have no phone or internet connection? How can you get a bill in the mail if you don’t reside at an address? How can you be stuck in traffic if you’ve pulled the key out of the ignition and walked ten miles from the nearest road?

It all seems so great and simple. Shut off, escape it all, clear your mind. But is it really effective? If you’re addicted to alcohol, sex, social media, or reality TV, hiking or other means of detachment don’t alleviate your addiction, they simply provide you with a forced restraint. You can just as easily carry a flask full of whiskey with you into the mountains. But even if you choose to deprive yourself of it for four days in the wilderness, you will still inevitably return to a world where whiskey exists.

Just simply detaching yourself from your burdens or added weight does not ensure that you will not be once again faced with the potential of reattaching to the burdens, it only briefly robs you of your access. There is only one way to truly face your burdens, whether they be physical addiction, emotional dependency, feelings of sorrow or hatred, or even the every day stresses of work or relationships. But it is not in fact to detach yourself from them, but to instead detach them from you.

If I want to shed the weight in my pack so as to alleviate the pain that is an effect of the weight, I have to quite simply shed the weight. I can only do this effectively if I empty out the contents of my pack and limit it to the things which I see as most valuable to achieve life. If ‘to live’ is the only requirement I deem necessary to spend a week in the wilderness, I will carry only the weight necessary to achieve that goal. If ‘to live’ is the only requirement I have for my day to day life in a society, which has and will always provide me with whatever addiction or burden I choose to carry, then I might not go back to the whiskey, the toxic relationship, or the endless social media dribble. If I view myself in the third person, “What does he value most?” I may find an ugly truth. What I value is not my family, it is not the sentimental item from a loved one, and it is certainly not the things I only require to live effectively. Instead what I value is the burden that I choose to carry. It is what I choose to consume myself with; hate, fear, anger, sadness, pride. All things unnecessary for life. All causes for addiction, helpless dependency, and pain. All values I nor anyone else can afford to carry.