On Nothing
I think I really shocked my friend Alex last night when I conceded that I don’t believe in anything, and I am utterly faithless in both God (which doesn’t exist) and humanity (which doesn’t deserve to exist). You’re born, you live about 80 years, you die. End of story. No afterlife.
“You mean you have no faith at all?” he said. “No belief in something that doesn’t yet exist? The idea that even with all the evil out there, that there’s also a lot of good?”
“No,” I said. “I don’t believe in anything. Nothing. You’re here, you live, you have some fun if you’re lucky, you die. There’s nothing else. And the sooner you’re out the better in my opinion. Things are going downhill so quickly and they’re not going to better.
“Why do you think I didn’t want kids? Who wants to bring kids into a dying world, droughts and water shortages, food shortages? We’re not going to be around in another couple of centuries, and if we are it will be in a much more manageable quantity and in much less pleasant circumstances.”
“But your parents surely thought that they were bringing kids into a troubled world…” Alex began,
“Oh come on,” I said. “That’s the same argument the pro-lifers use: ‘what if your mom had an abortion?’ Well, duh, I wouldn’t be here. Point being that just because my parents made a decision regarding whether or not to have kids, I’m not obliged to make the same decision.”
“And besides,” he added, “your parents probably felt that their kids would have a better life then they do and you.. well, you obviously don’t.
“So you have no faith,” Alex went on, “that mankind can’t think it’s way out of the current situation? Can’t change the way we live? No hope at all?”
“No. None.”
“Good god man, you really ARE depressed. You have nothing to look forward to!”
“Well, no, that’s not true. I’m looking forward to death.” Alex’s eyebrows shot up. “I mean, not that I’m going to go jump off the Ben Franklin Bridge or hasten my own end,” I continued, “but life is a pretty raw deal. It’s hard, it’s largely unpleasant, and death is pretty much the inevitable end anyway. I only hope that it comes when I’m around 70 or 75. 80 is pushing it. And since I don’t believe in Heaven OR Hell, I’m not really concerned about being pitched into a lake of fire.
“I’m not depressed either. I’m just a realist. You look at however many years we have of recorded history, and the majority of it is humanity doing the same things and making the same mistakes over and over and over again.
“Humanity isn’t going to do anything about global warming, even though the fixes are supposedly relatively simple. That’s because we live in an incredibly cynical time, in which no one is willing to pay for anything. God forbid we raise fuel efficiency standards, someone in Detroit might lose some money in the short run.
“Or 50 years ago, after the Holocaust, everyone said ‘never again’, and of course today we have Darfur, we went into Bosnia well after the slaughter began, Iraq…
“So yeah, I’m looking forward to death. It’s inevitable and it’s final blessed relief from life.”
I’m serious: there is very little pleasure in life, and a heck of a lot of suffering. I’m going to be happy when it’s over. I don’t see that as being depressed, I see that as reality.
Yet, as hard as it may be for some to believe, my faithlessness is what makes me so passionate and compassionate. Life can beat the crap out of you and I feel as if we’re all sort of obligated to make it a little less lousy for our comrades. So I work for social services and raise money to replace a fraction of what our leaders take away every year from the common good and throw into the money pit called “the war” or “tax breaks for rich people.” I vote for progressive Democrats, and call them out when they inevitably break their promises. I do my best to make life miserable for conservatives and republicans, who are doing their best to make life miserable for the rest of us.
Not because I expect some sort of Heavenly reward. And not because I believe that any of these efforts propel any sort of systemic or permanent change: they don’t. But they do, in some cases, make this temporary situation called “life” a bit more tolerable for people who have harder luck than I do.
That doesn’t make me depressed or hopeless: I think I’m a clear-eyed realist. And while I don’t have a problem with people who believe in God or hope or whatever, I honestly don’t understand where they’re coming from. They probably feel the same way about me.
4 Responses to “On Nothing”
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August 9th, 2007 at 12:21 pm
[...] House Contact the Webmaster Link to Article iraq On Nothing » Posted at Brendan Calling - I hear the voices, and I read the [...]
August 9th, 2007 at 6:19 pm
yes, exactly. What Brendan said. I sort of regret having kids - not because they aren’t great kids, they are - because this all seems so clear to me now. My kids have kids and if there is any hope for making this shit hole we call life better it will only be because we each realize that this is it. The one and only time and place we have. We can try to make it better for all of us or we can piss on everything and make it more miserable while trying to grab everything for ourselves.
August 10th, 2007 at 2:37 am
I don’t need your way of life
I can’t stand your attitudes
I can do without your strife
I don’t need this fucking world
I don’t need this fucking world
This world brings me down
Gag with every breath
This world brings me down
I’m looking forward to death
It seems so unreal to me
So much hate and so mouch pity
I can’t take another day
It’s such a bore
It gets me really sore
I don’t need this fucking world
I don’t need this fucking world
This world brings me down
Gag with every breath
This world brings me down
I’m looking forward to death
Looking forward to death
Dude, I’d totally play this Dead Kennedys song for you tomorrow if it wasn’t for the fucking FCC regs. Fuck them. Fucking fuck them all beyond sweet fuck-all. I’ll play something “cleaner” but much, much scarier in its place. You know where I’m going with this, right? Tune in and find out. It’ll likely be the first song I play, starting at 10, on WMBR FM, http://wmbr.org, blah blah meow meow rock meow blah meow punk meow meow meow blah meow don’t give a fuck meow blah blah meow meow fart tits meow blah blah blah blah blah…
August 10th, 2007 at 10:43 am
There is a theory that depressed people are actually the most in touch with reality and all its hopelessness. I’m not implying that you are depressed, though…but I can see how Alex made that connection.
I just saw a great 3-part series on PBS on atheism called ‘Brief History of Disbelief’…check it out of you can! Definatly worth watching…