I don't know what I'm doing

A few moments ago, I overheard one of my fellow employees asking yet another fellow employee if he knew of any Biblical references to UFOs. I kid you not. The end is near people. Bask in the glory of end times.

Glib? Probably, but at some point you have to ask how it is that humanity ( and I still have to keep myself from using the sexist term Mankind; curse you 60's ) has survived for so long, and I now believe that the lack of technology has been, rather than being an impediment, the key to our longevity. In the dark ages people were dependent on one another for their community, their survival in bad times, their moral center, their............

One would think, but who knows. My dark ages were the 60's, so my reference may not be complete. I have read a lot of history, though, and yes, that may not count for much either.

Still ( I intend to overuse that word extensively in this post ), and I'll tell the reason I'm even bringing this up soon, I'm beginning to believe we on the road to our Wall-E period, and unlike the people in that whimsical cartoon; we're doomed. Well, those of us in the western tradition are doomed to self obsession. All you need to know is this one word; Twitter. The inorganic progression from the inane cell phone call. Now instead of calling one person to let them know you're going to the bathroom, you can now inform everyone else you believe is deeply interested in your every move and thought.

-----This has possibilities in product surveys and or endorsements. Does this brand of toilet paper have the wherewithal to cleave the damage done or does it come apart in your hand? Inquiring minds.------

As if our society isn't narcissistic enough.

This came into my febrile little mind when listening to a story about a photographer, recently deceased, who commented that people used to live in the streets ( not literally, although we know that is a part of human existence ); that that's where their community was; that's where the action was. No TV. They had the radio. Still, one would assume, connection came from actual human contact.

Back in the day.

Still ( annoyed yet ), great civilizations thrive on outward growth, not inward navel gazing, and an inordinate interest in the mundane of the everyman, or woman. Our lives just aren't that important or interesting. Yet technology is apace to drown us in the detritus of our collective existence. We no longer need to strive to survive; we got more than we'll ever need ( whether or not it's adequately share so no person goes without is another question ), by far, to survive. The question has been posed as to whether that's a good thing or bad. Are we more generous? Are we more knowledgeable? Are we more righteous before the Lord; assuming we're not consumed by Biblical references to creatures from beyond the moon? Are we, like all great civilizations before us, growing weak by our own satisfaction only to be consumed by one more vigorous and opportunistic society? Conservatives worry about such things; progressives see it as necessary change; nativists see it as evil, and the rest of won't notice because we're too busy following some vacuous celebrity on Twitter.

The pessimist see all of this as the end of the world; not the earth ( we'll talk about that another time ), but of humanity as we know it. Why? Because there ought to be more to life. Because if we corrupt the rest of humanity into self centered shop-a-holics then where is the glory of existence to go?

Still, it's possible that having a life where you're free to spend your life navel gazing, shopping, collecting any variety of objects has it joys and merits. The freedom not to worry about having enough to eat, a place of shelter, the opportunity to do and say what you want with only minor difficulties has it's charms. Charms which a great number of people on this earth do not have.

Still.

Rashomon

One of my favorite films is Rashomon. I watched it recently, and as usual I found it deeply compelling. If you don't know, the film is about a rape and murder in feudal Japan. The characters are a woodsman, priest, commoner, bandit, samurai, his wife, and a medium. The commoner meets the woodsman and the priest at a dilapidated shrine during a monsoon. With nothing better to do to pass the time until the rains end, the commoner seeks to hear why the two men are inconsolable; the woodsman with what he has just witnessed at the courthouse, and the priest with his loss of faith in humanity, also a byproduct of what he has witnessed at the courthouse.

The woodsman recounts how he discovers the body of the samurai, tells the police, and comes to the courthouse to hear the witnesses. First up is the bandit. He sees the samurai and his wife on the road but feigns disinterest until a providential wind rouses him. He desires the wife and so connives to trick the samurai, ties him up, returns for the wife and then rapes her in the presence of the samurai. She at first resists him, but then submits. Afterward she wants to go with the bandit, then convinces the bandit to allow the samurai to defend his honor. After a mighty struggle, the bandit kills the samurai. The wife runs away.

Having been found hiding in a temple, the wife is brought to court to tell her side of the story. She recounts being brought to where her husband has been tied up, and being forced to yield to the bandit. Having been shamed in front of her husband, she tells them they must decide who she will go with. When she approaches her husband she recoils from his obvious contempt for her. She become angry at his failure to defend her honor. The bandit takes off. The wife realizing she has been abandoned by both of them, kills her husband with her pearl inlaid knife. She wails at her circumstances.

At this point a medium is brought to the court to channel the dead samurai. He laments his fall into darkness. His version is that after being foolish enough to be tricked by the bandit, and being forced to witness the rape of his wife, his shame, not only with his own foolishness, but also his wife's unwilling to commit suicide for her failure to resist the bandit; as well as her abandonment, leaves him no other choice but to regain his honor through suicide. He then kills himself with his wife's blade.

At this point the woodsman blurts out that the samurai was killed with a sword. The commoner goads the woodsman into admitting that he had done more than just find the body, that he had witnessed the whole affair. After explaining that he didn't want to get involved he told what he had seen. Turns out that after the rape, the bandit wasn't quite sure what to do; take the woman; leave the woman? The samurai was scornful of his wife, telling her the honorable thing to do would be to kill herself. The wife while weeping through most of this, lets out a laughing scream and curses the bandit and her husband, calling them weak and cowardly. By questioning their courage and manhood, she shames them into a fight it's obvious neither one wants, and as expected there is a lot of running and wild swinging of the sort you'd get from two people deathly afraid of being killed. after exhausting themselves circumstances find the bandit standing over the samurai with his sword ready to strike, but he clearly doesn't want to, and the samurai pleads that he doesn't want to die. The bandit plunges home the sword and runs away, as does the wife.

The woodsman doesn't understand why they would tell different versions of what happened. The priest doesn't understand either, but the commoner isn't surprised. That moment they hear a baby's cry and discover an abandoned child. The commoner takes the kimono left to keep the child warm. The others are shocked he would steal from a child. He mocks them saying the child was unwanted and left to die. He then accuses the woodsman of stealing the pearl inlaid knife of the wife; calling him a hypocrite and a liar. The priest takes the child appalled at the two of them; the commoner laughs at him; the woodsman, claiming that he already has six children at home can support another and takes the child. The priest, unconvincingly, sates his belief in humanity has been restored.

If you're looking for the redemption of humanity in this film you'll be disappointed. It is not uplifting. It does however make a damning commentary on how people choose to see their life and actions and how those views can differ markedly from what we would call literal truth, assuming we would know it. Each character represent an archetype and plays to that stereotype. The honest woodsman, the noble priest, the honorable samurai, the good wife, and the free wheeling bandit. The commoner is humanity in it's unvarnished form; selfish, grubbing, lacking in guile, unapologetic, and certain we've all got something to hide. It's not a particularly pleasant picture to see, but that's the point. Even in their worst moment, our characters seek to delude not only us but themselves as well. The bandit plays to his audience at the court with bravado and orneriness; believing that's what they expect to see. Never mind that when we first see him he is driving himself through the sand by the river, feverishly trying to scrape away the murder that hangs on him. The samurai sees himself as an honorable man put in a situation where the only acceptable outcome is suicide. The fact that he despises his wife, is not a prototypical samurai warrior, and is fearful of dying doesn't jibe with the social construct of how he is expected to behave.

The wife is stuck; there's no way she's going to come out of this in a good way. Not in that time; not in that society. She seeks sympathy at the court knowing that her life is irretrievably broken, but her character conspires against her and she seems pathetic and grasping. The woodsman and the priest expect to see society and it's participants in a clear cut way. The ambiguity and falsity of the characters at the court leave them unmoored and unsure how to navigate. The commoner sees them all as phonies and fools. He recognizes the fallacy of humanity believing itself to be better than it really is. He's not afraid to tell them what they are or to accept his own selfishness. He knows to put himself first; that life is hard and capricious; full of want and desire, and quick to end, whether good or bad. Sooner or later the reaper finds you, and no amount of subterfuge or wailing will save you. You do what you have to to survive.

Maybe it's the darkness that pervades the end of the film that is unsettling; there is no pat answers or happy ending. No one comes out of it wiser or for the better. They only shake their heads and wonder why and have no answers.

Wither Heaven, or some indeterminate other, Part 2

The big problem with most images or imaginations of heaven, or hell for that matter, is that they're merely perfections of an earthly life. Always wonderful; never tricky or foreboding, without the problems endemic to mortality; hunger, fear, corruption, and death. That's understandable in a sense; it's an extension of what we know, but presumes to know the unknowable and have control over something untouchable that is beyond our control. Truthfully, it's to exercise control over others in this life and beyond. To a large extent, in this life it's very doable; and is, but to extend it into the afterlife is trickier. Therefore it's important to play to the emotions that govern our behavior, that allow us to maintain some form of civility, and to control our baser instincts. Good behavior has it's rewards today and tomorrow, as does ill behavior demand retribution and or punishment.

The indeterminate other being hell, the void, nothingness; Annihilation-ism, the idea of giving up any afterlife at all rather than be subjugated to one that is not of our choice. It might also be none of the above. The idea that we know what's after is a dodge; we don't. We conjecture, we fulminate, we create what we wish to believe in, what we hope for, what we hope to avoid; what we believe others deserve. We anthropomorphize God in such a way as to have a means to control that which we don't know or understand. If God is in our image, as opposed to our being in his; which supposes that we understand the mind of God ( another assumption that God has a " mind " as we understand it ), then we can extrapolate our thoughts onto his, and by osmosis gleam his intentions and desires for us both on earth and after.

This impulse is described in Genesis through the story of Adam and Eve. Though warned not to consume the fruit from the tree of knowledge, Adam's hubris is manipulated by the serpent to contravene God's directive. Adam is sure he knows God's mind and is willing to disobey because he wishes to have God's knowledge which we are told is sublime and unending. God, naturally, is upset; this being the more demonstrative God of the early books of the Bible, and give Adam and Eve what they, and therefore the rest of humanity, so richly deserve; the desolation of only knowing a little; only enough to see how far they truly have to go to know God's " mind ". So we have treked since then ruminating our place, our beloved humanity, our gods and or God, longing to find our rightful place, and fearful that we're nothing more than bit player in a much larger and more consequential cosmic dance.

Next: this must be going somewhere? Right?

Wither Heaven, or some indeterminate other, Part 1.

The nature of our existence on earth is dependent on our expectations for what comes afterward. If we believe in an afterlife, then; one would think, our conduct on earth, or in our physical period versus an ethereal or metaphysical state, would directly affect our prospects in that afterlife. That is where the fun begins; do we conduct ourselves based on the here and now, the temporal, physical, sensual pleasures and pains, or do we temper ourselves knowing that if we maintain our collective dignities that a greater reward awaits us in the next life.

Makes you wonder.

While the idea of an afterlife has a lot going for it; assuming that it's better than the life we have on earth ( and I think it's reasonable to assume that this is the only heavenly body to which we are assigned; I don't know that I wish to moon over some possible other life on a planet in a galaxy far far away ), I don't know that a lot of thought has gone into what that entails. There is a great body of work dealing with the existence and argumentative nature of heaven and hell, but not too much on exactly how that would play out long term. Sure, there are descriptions of heaven and hell, along with the good, the bad, and the ugly, but not much in how an entity ( more on that later ) would cope with the eternity factor. Eternity, as they say, last a long time. The argument could go that as we would no longer be bound to earthly constraints, the idea or concept of time would be irrelevant. Is there day and night? Would we need to sleep? How approachable would your idols be ( if they're even remotely famous, you'd think having souls come up to you all the time talking about the same stuff would become tiring; of course we're all supposed to be enlightened munificent souls by that point ). Would your greatest sports heroes really want to spend their afterlife playing with the less athletic ( assuming a) that everyone is as they were at 25 and at their genetic potential ( which is another big question ) and b) much more athletically gifted than they were in life ( this also posits the question of whether athletes on earth are at their peak )) than with their earthly peers? I'm thinking; no. We'd still be spectators, although there would be the hope that some age old questions about one eras players going against another would be answered on the field of play.

What if all you wanted to do was farm? I'm also assuming no need for sustenance in the afterlife; although for gourmands that might just be a reason to gorge in this life and let the chips fall where they may. If you can eat in heaven then what about waste? Will food have the same taste? If there's no hunger or appetite; then is this a pointless question? Is it OK to do nothing; to be a complete waste, which one would think would be better thought of in heaven than on earth? There's no need to be a do gooder; all the crappy pieces of shit you had to tolerate in life are rotting in hell ( that's the hope is it not ). Consequently, there's no reason to do anything once you get there; having done the hard work during one's mortality.

Needless to say, the real assumption here is that time has no meaning in the afterlife, and that when one gets there there will be no moaning over the prospect of doing the same things till the end of time.

Then there's whether there's a need to define life after you've lived it. I think the pertinent question is whether all questions are truly answered in heaven. You think!