When I say I'm an optimistic nihilist, I didn't think it'd be a hard idea to grasp. But when I think about it now, I can see why people do get confused.
When I say life is meaningless, that doesn't mean I don't have a purpose in life, or that I'm constantly on suicide watch. What I mean here is that the meaning of life is only asked by us because we exist and we are intelligent enough to acknowledge we exist. To me any any kind of life was never meant for anything. We exist only because we exist. Nothing else. It's the product of millions of years of evolution. If we didn't evolve into the thinking beings we are, we would never contemplate the purposes of our own existence.
Again, I'm a non-believer in God, so I don't believe that we were created, less so that we were created with a purpose. In Islam that purpose is to serve under God. If that is indeed our purpose, I think that's infinitely more depressing than having no pre-set purpose in the first place. I'm a person who holds close to his heart the phrase 'carpe diem.'
I do have thoughts for the future, but most of my life is concentrated in the here and now. And most of us is like that, but to a different degree.
When I say I'm an optimist, it's because I do approach life cheerfully and do believe that for happiness to come you don't need a specific pre-set purpose that was set for you before you even existed. I don't believe in the question 'what is the meaning of life?' because with all the time you spend trying to find an answer, you've missed just living your life.
I love my life. I know a few nihilists, and some of them would rather not exist. Me, well. I don't think I mind either way. It's not really a choice, is it? Unless you think suicide is a choice.
It is, sort of. For people who feel too powerless to control anything, they must feel their own mortality are the only things they are left in control with. Which is why I find it extremely harsh that anyone would condemn someone who committed suicide to hell. The concept of heaven and hell is a very black and white process when it comes to suicide (and with a lot of other things). Kill yourself, you go straight to hell.
What kind of god would condemn a vulnerable, helpless human to hell for eternity? We know better than to ostracise any suicidal person. I mean, a vulnerable, depressed and unstable person is hardly the ideal candidate for eternal torture. This God, if He put himself in human form and spoke about suicide in that harsh manner, He would be considered insensitive at the least. Ironically it would make him a Darwinist. The weak and helpless are thrown into hell without any chance for parole. The surreally virtuous and sinless go straight to heaven. If you're inbetween, you go to hell for a few million years, then you can go to heaven, albeit naked and marked.
It took me another week to update. I think that'll be the normal interval from now for updates.
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Hi Jason, I think you're missing a few steps here when you talk about Islam, as you remember I'm not a big fan about Islam myself but there are a few points you should remember whilst arguing about Islam.
ReplyDeleteThe first is the fact that Islam is subjective to the quotas and quotients of its particular society that it inhabits. When you read back there was a struggle between Rationalists and Traditionalists that had resulted in the Traditionalists having the upper hand thus closing all the doors of ijtihad and therefore no new mazhabs can anymore be seen. Interpretations are numerous and overlapping and there is also the question of the Koran which has been created post death of Muhammad saw. I do have to agree with historians on this one, Muhammad is, was a revolutionary leader of his time, along the way his image has been distorted repeatedly into continuum that it becomes unrecognizable and thus the form of Islam that we have today. There have been in many instances such as today Islamic feminism that have reinterpreted the Koran (historians say that the original langue of the Koran was Syriano-Aramaic as Arabic that was in it which was classical Arabic is still apparently new around the time of Muhammad's existence) Therefore when you say the raison d'etre of Islam is subservience to God I kind of disagree, religion in its previous context MUST have served a political, social, economic and unitary ROLE. Religion is created in context of the situation that demands it it does not pop its reared ugly head without meaning or purpose and along the way rigidity is imposed that the religion has difficulty to move or to expand. I understand such populist modern notions that you espouse but I am also concerned with the lack of respect you engender towards OTHER religions for example, paganistic, animistic, Hindu, Buddhist, Judaism, Christianity, etc. It's all and well when we criticize our own religion but when we receive into the picture an image of several diverse religions how is it that you could possibly think to disregard it and kill it altogether? This is after all a part of Human Rights that you speak of. A good example is when the animistic religions of the Semang or Semai of peninsular Malaysia is thrown on the side for the sake of modernity/Islam (I'm saying not just Islam but modernity as well). Have they no right to protect THEIR way of life?
Okay. I admit it. I have finally read your blog. From top to bottom (or is it bottom to the top? Whatever).
ReplyDeleteKnow what? I come to the conclusion that you are ranting about Nothing. Nothing at all. Don't know what makes you so worked up. Are you trying to convert me? Or... is there something else?