Sunday, May 07, 2006
superficial
maybe that's one word to describe the way humans live. but then again if you think about it, superficiality and depth are just human constructions. you know what i mean? concepts, perceptions..that's all they are. ideas of what ought to be versus what they shouldn't be.
nietszche once said: 'morality is the herd instinct of the masses'. you know, the way we live and think is shaped by society and all that jazz. but maybe by assuming we have moral dignity and such we're simply putting on airs. who do we put on morals for? god? i know christians are gonna flame me into utter oblivion for this, but hell, seriously, why do we care what god thinks or whatever? what comes out of it for us? salvation? then we're just doing this for ourselves and not for god, are we not? what sort of christians does that make us?
for a while, i got myself involved in the church and everything because i believed that it was all altruistic and noble, but soon i realised, 'what the fuck am i doing this for? i'm doing this for the motive of bringing god to people, sure, but in the very end, it's just that it makes me feel good about myself. the people around me, the sense of belonging, the feeling of being looked up to...all of this for myself. and that is nothing short of being absolutely superficial. it makes me a false christian, because then the only one i worship is myself.'
really, who cares about our dignity and nobility? we aren't really that special. what makes us think we are? we're just misled to believe that all of that actually matters; few people question the nature of morality, the reasons for morality, they just close their eyes and imagine that it is right just because everyone says so. often, when i do things i'm not meant to, i feel no regret, no guilt, no remorse. it's like my spirit has been cut away from my body. i simply do it, i look on it, i move on. no regrets. sometimes. i grew up in an environment with very strong guidelines outlining what's right, what's wrong: nurture isn't really part of that numbness. it's simply that it isn't in human nature to really be above any of this. we're just trained to believe we ought to be, and we often follow it out of habit.
for a while, i thought i was above alot of other people, that i was of a sort of heightened intellectual consciousness, that i was aware of much more, that i saw so much more. now i think that all of it was so much more superficial than others' thoughts, taking things so bloody pretentiously, believing that any of that made me a better human. intellect is rubbish though. it doesn't make us happier than we already are. in fact, it probably makes us even sadder. in the end, it's all rubbish really. human perception, concepts, blah-di-blah-blah. us assuming that our perception is truth. except that our perceptions are different.
reality is, according to our minds, meant to be fixed, unchangeable. since our perceptions are our reality, they are not really truth; they aren't fixed. they change, they develop for the individual over time. and they vary at any one time. think about it: within melbourne alone, there are 4 million different realities existing at one time (one per person). and maybe twice that number, for the reality that people experience when they sleep and dream, then add a few more for those with schizophrenia and multiple personality disorders. same goes for singapore. in such a case, how can we assume that we understand anything truly? thinking that way just makes us even more foolish than we already are. perhaps in imagining ourselves to be so 'deep', we're just becoming increasingly hollow.
of course, i don't encourage a total discarding of morals or intellectual reasoning or whatever. i don't think it's very pleasant to have people living like beasts, or becoming absolutely disillusioned. what i mean is really that we very often have to examine ourselves, and decide for ourselves what we personally feel we should follow, not what others think we ought to follow. we're thinking creatures, that's what sets us apart from other creatures. we shouldn't just follow the way of life set before us simply because its there. we have this ability, whether granted by some light-endowed deity or the randomness of evolution, and we should use it. take what you believe in, because only then will you really feel that it is a code worth living by. only then would any of your choices take any real sort of meaning, any real form within you. it's not the way we live that's superficial; it's us and our motives behind our actions that are.
then again, everything here is just a point of view, a perception, a superficial observation. and because it's subjective, who am i to impose in any way? can we judge anything people do? our reasoning is as flawed as theirs. and so, just like in my art, in my writing i have no right to impose. suggestion is only the furthest boundary i can push.
**dream until you die**
1:26 AM
