Random Thoughts: Life, Death, the Living, the Dead
A student sent me a text message today consisting of the following questions: “Why is it important to try to think and find the existence of my soul? Why do you live?”
Interestingly, the second question implies that the terms of the first question — thinking and finding the existence of the soul — are coextensive with the question of why I live. In other words, the second question is actually just a simplification of the first. Quite appropriate, since life, for me, does indeed essentially mean “thinking and finding the existence of the soul.”
Why do I live? The short answer: I live because I want to discover the correct way to die, so I can do it well.
Every day, I read headlines from the mainstream propaganda sources informing me that this or that expert — usually Dr. Fauci — has “just said” that some symptom or other is the surest sign you have, or have had, Covid-19. False, every time, and viciously so.
Here, if we are going to be truthful, factual, and non-hyperbolic, are the three most common signs that you have, or have had, Covid-19:
- You feel fine, or have no significant health complaints.
- You are not in any specific danger of dying these days.
- You have no reason whatsoever to suspect you have Covid-19 or any other viral disease right now.
Why do we suddenly laugh when we feel like crying? Probably because we see the absurdity of the urge to cry, or of the situation that prompted it.
Late modern nihilism finds an alleged absurdity under every rational bed, which is to say that nihilism gets its absurdity cheap, or rather unearned. To look around today’s nihilistic age as a non-nihilist, however, is to feel at once beaten and sullied by the morbidity of it all, which naturally evokes a moment of hopelessness in a person thoughtfully sensitive to his surroundings. At this moment, one may sink into despair, or one may laugh at one’s predicament — at the genuine absurdity of living in a world that has radically, willingly normalized the absurd.
To face such true absurdity squarely — including, sometimes, in oneself — can promote a necessary release of spiritual pressure, in the form of uncontrollable laughter at the irrationality of the situation. The logical mind, which cannot answer the illogical, simply evaporates it, at least temporarily, as a natural self-correction. We may call this the laughter of reason.
Executive orders spewed by the dozens to summarily cancel out your elected predecessor’s policies. Random and probably unconstitutional airstrikes in Syria to send a “message” that you are some kind of tough guy (presumably to be followed by four years of kowtowing to every tyrant on Earth). Handing out administration appointments to any establishment cronies or grassroots fringe kooks you can find who might give you the optics of credibility with your establishment backers or grassroots voters, respectively.
See? Who said the 2020 U.S. election would bring radical change? It looks like business as usual to me.
