Being around planet Earth for over a quarter of a century has been both a pleasure and a bore. One could say I’m a totally absorbed denizen of Earth by now. I may be expected to understand and exhibit the culture and practices of Earthlings. Unfortunately as time passes by and I get older, I fear that I might no longer fit in. As my latent dispositions begin to come to the fore, more and more do I feel alienated from the human condition, instinct and belief. George Orwell wrote once that being alone in an ideology or philosophy is being alone in lunacy. I agree with him most times but allow me a shot in the dark here, is it entirely impossible that I am sane and everyone else is loco? Is it so far out there that I was an islet of impeccable order amidst the raging sea that is the cosmos?
For a creature (perhaps only mammal for I know not what I’m talking about) with certainly the largest brain to body size ratio, if not simply the largest brained one, humans exhibit more than any other creature the herd mentality. There are those, probably of my kind but not of my disposition, who exploit these mentalities and rule over mankind. How else can you explain suicide bombings and mass suicide by poisoning? If I had met with Napoleon Bonaparte or Machiavelli, both aliens surely, I might have gotten some lessons from them and maybe by the end of this article, I would have won for myself some worshippers.
The impatient reader will want to ask what on earth my point is. Well, fuck you too. My point, yes, let’s get to that. Some scientist dude once remarked that if it was possible for him to somehow determine the orientation of every single particle in the universe, he could then accurately predict the course of every action. In essence, he would be able to accurately predict the future. I really enjoy witty submissions such as this one. They intrigue you and capture your attention and, very like the human thing to do, the fact that you can’t disprove the theory somehow illogically registers surreptitiously as proof of its truth in your subconscious. But I digress. Let’s assume for the sake of argument that this theory was sound and based on a truism (which is just a fancy way of saying it sounds so right and makes perfect sense that it must be the absolute truth) and not really on fact. Even if this were the case, the theory would still implode in on itself because of one simple thing; humans cannot be trusted to behave rationally. If you slapped three people chosen at random, one will probably slug you back, another may call the police and the last one might start getting aroused and ask for an encore.
Fear of the unknown, religion, selective and subjective reasoning, pure undiluted ignorance, afterlife and pre-life, the primal and exclusive urges of homicide, anger, jealousy, love, pride, desire, greed, faith and faithfulness, hate, sorrow and happiness. These are the failings of the human. These are the tools by which humans are manipulated, sometimes by their very selves.
Some people think that the awful earthquake that happened in Haiti was as a result of God’s wrath because they commit so much sin in Haiti and God just quite simply lost His cool. Me, I think it might have something to do with underground plates grinding against each other along a fault plane or from volcanic activity below the earth’s surface but that’s just my own silly opinion. I know of many countries more offensive to God than Haiti. At least they believe in some sort of spirituality which they largely keep to themselves. A few decades back, it was a great offence to even propose the existence of God in Russia. It was not allowed to simply be a deist.
The human mind is bound to be superstitious. It is in his nature and he doesn’t activate it for it is always there. Most men believe that there is something after this life not because of a holy book or any evidence. He just cannot grasp nothingness. He cannot wrap his head around nonexistence. Some people think we must have come from somewhere, some other world like this one perhaps. Some people have their head so deep down the rabbit hole that they believe human thought is not tangible and what is not tangible is subjective and cannot be said to be real and if this is so, since we perceive everything as thought or sensation, our entire reality cannot be real. I think I’ll stick with Descartes.
In the end, even the one who calls himself an existentialist is not really so for he is no less a slave to all these flaws than the rest of us. One does not exactly make all one’s decisions though it might appear that way. Many times, decisions are being made for us but we do not know this. God is great J
Vescucci and Amadeus 