The End of Belief

It’s amazing the sensation of liberty from thought. Earlier in the week I realized that I had stopped believing in believing, that is to stay, I no longer hold truths to be universal and ever-lasting. I see them more as a continuous thought process that manipulates and changes itself, staying the same in function and feeling but differentiating concepts and themes allowing for intellectual growth (and hopefully some sort of crazy prosperity that has nothing to do with money nor desire). It seems pretty ignorant to say that one believes one thing to be true and that that will never change. Isn’t that just another limitation on learning and development?

Last semester I was sitting in class bored out of my mind and I decided to take an average of the words the professor was blurting out. The average was 80 words per minute (and I only did a few tests so this number could be relatively high). I multiplied and found out that by the end of the semester we would have heard more than 165,000 words related to various lectures. To be even more absurd I tried to count the number of words that were required to read. Something to the effect of 100,000. I then counted the amount of words that had to be regurgitated via the mid-term, final exam, and two papers. The total came out to be 5000. That is to say, of the 265,000 words that we heard and were asked to read roughly 1.8% had to be summarized and put into paper.

This gave me a few ideas: one that I’m strange, two that in general teachers talk way too much, and three that if only 1.8% was actually going to get a grade it was better to read more. Or maybe to not read at all. It seems that instead of breaking information down in the form of thousands of words that we are asked rather to process them and put them back into concise phrases and thoughts. This would complete the process of whole to many and back to whole again and would disprove my assumption that education only exists by forcing knowledge and that knowledge only means destruction. In other words: I proved myself wrong. An idea changed in my head and I was able to build upon others. I think that’s what I mean when I say that I don’t believe in believing.

Sitting in Roman History class today it came to my attention (as it does everyday) that there is something really weird and threatening about history. Personally I don’t think it has to exist, but it is so complex. What is it? What’s its function? And the kicker: does it have to be what it is and function they way it does?

What is it?
A great question still to this day. I would be horribly misleading if I said it was the study of the past. I would also be wrong. It can’t be the study of just the past. As we have seen earlier the past is just a backward projection of the present, a concept of our invention of time used to….well, to help us understand. We have to create to understand, at least it seems that way.

So it can’t be just the study of the past but rather the study of time itself. And this makes a little more sense since time is a manifestation of our need to regulate our world by instilling the farce that time is inherent to nature and therefore dependent of us. This phrase in itself poses more and more doubts than it does reaffirmations of previous ideas. First and foremost being inherent to nature seems a little much, as we are a part of nature. Dependent of ourselves again invokes this ability to separate ourselves from our ideas which only continues the divide and conquer mentality. This time its ourselves from ourselves. I think that’s the basis of an identity crisis.

Identity, merely a name? Names don’t matter, but it seems that we are governed by them (or so thought Edward Gibbons a century or two ago). Identity, given to us by language or better yet given to us by our masters, tells us who we are, what we do, where we came from, and most likely where we are going to do. Four fundamental philosophical questions that also religion tries to answer. It seems like an easier way to contemplate the universe: give yourself a name and a religion. This, again, will make it much easier to go to school and go to work as these important and diabolical questions are answered with our beliefs that they are true. Again, I do not repeat to strengthen the point as much as I do to make more connections with it.

So we have this history that has something to do with time but not just the past. And it’s actually a little more constricted and closer I think to literature than to anything else, as history traditionally is the study of written text. Because if it isn’t written then it didn’t happen. But this pre-history exists, we don’t know how long since in this phase written language seems to be both our crutch and our cancer. We cannot live without with nor without it, both literally and figuratively.

Still in history class I pondered the idea of writing. If something isn’t written it is not true? Obviously not, as many things that we hold true don’t have to be written although it makes it a little easier to understand. Or maybe it makes it difficult to understand as we are limited with the infinite permutations of the language(s) that we are able to use. Something not written is not true? False. Something not written is not real? True. And now we fall back in the hole, the battle of truth versus reality, and in this sense it might be possible that they are not exactly the same concept albeit part of the universe. It seems that something that is written is both true and real, which have their oppositions (and strong ones at that), but by taking their negations we find that while reality takes the same stance truth becomes more evasive. It isn’t clear. Things don’t have to be written down to be true, but for some reason they have to be written down to be real?

At least this is the stance that I get when I listen to history lectures. If it ain’t on paper it didn’t happen. One of the main problems with this is that fact of human biases and ignorance, which are not crimes. Simply the truth that we don’t understand everything about everything (and if we did the universe would have to re-create itself, better yet we would have to create another universe in order to start the process again, as only desires can be channeled and used to coerce people into doing things that they might not want to do) makes it necessary to talk and broaden our own information. The problem with information? Rupert Murdock. It’s funny how most names comes with a squiggly line on word but for some reason microsoft knows exactly how it is spelled.

He owns about 60% of the world’s media comprising all of fox and its subsidiaries as well as hundreds of newspapers, internet sites, magazines and TV shows. The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal (two of the countries most popular papers) are owned by him.

We’re taught that history’s strength relies on its number and differentiation of sources, which means sources from different people at different times that help to get rid of the weaker thoughts and grab hold of those that prove to be more true. The problem with one person at the top of the ladder means that even if fox news, 100 newspapers, the internet, and magazines have similar articles it would be assumed that they are from different sources and therefore information is deemed reputable, becoming believed by us thus making it true and part of the world. This, however, is yet again another farce, the same idea is reading the History of Rome written by a Roman senator. What about the rest of the world? What does everyone else have to say? Why isn’t that as important?

I doubt we have come close to answering the first of the two questions which leads me to yet again another tangent. I think it’s more important to ask questions than to answer then. Asking takes thought, promise, the ability to think and want to mature a thought. Answering questions should in my opinion ask more, continuing and strengthening (or weakening) the subject at hand. The answers that simplify and dummy down these ideas, in actuality, serve for the better of our understanding, as most are inflated to exaggerated proportions. In other words: a long and complex story is never long nor complex, but by using language and other tools we can stretch a very simple and fundamental idea and make it seem important. We are then given these data through various ports that are deemed not only reputable but more reputable than wikipedia or the average person’s thought process. Finally, these data become fact, become, truth. But this truth is dead as it stands still. Nothing stands still, why should ideas?

The function of history, some could say that there is none dependent of our own need to understand. It is cited and used to better our understanding of ourselves, or at least we so think. For the most part it seems like a bunch of studies of people in power. Of governments, of changes of these governments and the reasons as to why these change. We begin to see that names and functions have some similarities even if they can be separated for a moment. What about the average person? Not represented, not as the bulk of the population.

Power, or force based on fear. Fear of what? Fear of nothing. This fear is used through military force, guns, death, defending the imaginary lines that politicians draw to continue to divide and conquer us.

A terrorist is someone that causes fear, using that to coerce people to do something, think a certain way, act a certain way. Power, therefore, is terrorism. And governments, being in power, are all terrorists working both against and with one another to continue domination. Masters keep masters in power as they look to better their attributes. It’s not that difficult to see which makes me wonder why we don’t see it. Too many toys to play with?

It has come to most of our attention that America in 2009 resembles more Germany or Italy before the 2nd world war than it does George Washington (an Iraqi soldier turned president). We all know what happened because history tells us. But what does it tell us and how to we know?

I feel this great detachment from things and the more I look in to history the more I realize of its convention. We don’t write down what we see, we write down what we think we see and become slaves to our own ideas. How to free ourselves?

Liberating our ideas by making them water. Always flowing, always changing, always the same. Moving, however. Our ideas need to start moving. This does not have to do with time nor space, at least it doesn’t have to. It more should deal with our own capacity to learn and understand. For some reason, however, we are told what those words mean and how to go about achieving those goals set before us.

I wanted to talk about Pi and the unit circle and the name and function of god but I guess I’ve written more than enough to get some heads turning. Thanks for all the responses so far. Hieroglyphics are awesome.

-Anthony