This concludes the very loose “Christmas Trilogy”. It was written at the same time as “Truly Universal Christmas” and “Why I Love Team Rocket”. Enjoy
Being a shameless non-believer can be quite awkward sometimes. Especially when attending a mass on Christmas Day. But I suppose I owe it to the Christian community, since we secular folk use their holiday as an excuse for shameless materialism.
Anyways, it wasn’t bad or anything, but while the people around you pray and chant, you just sit (or stand there) and think. And I for once like thinking. I mean the abstract kind of thinking where you don’t come up with revolutionary physical formulas, but when you just think about stuff in general.
So while kind of being there I started thinking about existentialists. Even if I don’t know everything about them, but the basic idea behind their philosophy is that the humans existence is in vain. We exist to exist. There is no meaning; our actions are, in the cosmic sense, futile, because we’ll all die anyway.
I really don’t know how this has anything to do with Christianity, but it seems quite the opposite. Christianity gives you moral guidelines and strives to find meaning. Existentialists basically tell you that life has no meaning and that the human condition is quite miserable.
Even if the existentialist ideas seem quite dark and lacking guidelines, I believe that this is not so; in fact existentialism doesn’t need to be all that bad.
Firstly, as an individual, you are respected and you are not pushed to do things that you would rather not do. You don’t need to go on a diet; there is no point in going to war, since it really doesn’t matter. However, incentives to do good are lacking. There is no point of helping the needy, etc, no point of being friendly to one another, since it serves no higher purpose. Then again, helping the needy just because you don’t want to end up in hell is just as selfish, even if there are actual benefits to the society.
Our two options seem to be to either create a sincere, but indifferent society, or hypocritical, but caring society. I wonder what society we live in. I suppose a mixture of the two. But is it the hypocritical/selfish or sincere/caring combination? You figure that out for yourself. I know which society I would like to live in.
Peter
Posted by petersmisek 