02:27:56

I was reading some Tolstoy today. It was just a short passage from "Confession" that was in my philosophy textbook, but I really gained a lot from it. Well, I guess I gained some assurance that my ideas about life are that off the wall. Tolstoy found that after becoming rather wealthy, he lost interest in life. And when he questioned why he was alive, he could come up with no good answer.

I think we can all kind of understand that feeling. It seems like a rather common form of depression. But Tolstoy came to a sort of conclusion about this lack of meaning. See, there really is no meaning to life (as far as we can tell). All that really keeps us going is our faith. Yes, that's right, it's our faith! Now you may ask, "Billy, aren't you an atheist? Or at least an agnostic?" Yeah, sure I am. Lots of us are, and yet it is still our faith that keeps us living like we do. What separates us from the Christians (and other blind religious followers) is that we don't have a name for our faith.

Here's what it boils down to: we have faith that being alive is worthwhile, or at least better than being dead. I think most of us agree that being alive is probably better than being dead, otherwise we'd all have killed ourselves by now, right? We believe this, and go on living and suffering, knowing that all of our pain will be worth it at some point. We may tell ourselves that things will always get better, or that at some point there will be a big pay-off, but we really have no proof. If someone were to ask me what the meaning of life is, I wouldn't be able to tell them. Actually, if I were to think about it a while, and look at all history, I'd have to conclude that there probably is no reason to live, other than to pass on our genes, because that is our instinct. I think that deep down, a religious person might know this or think this, but fear it so intensely that they put all of their faith into something they call God. That way, if they're ever asked, by another person or themselves, what is the meaning of life, they can just say, "Well, I don't know. But God does, and he has a plan for me. So I'll just do as he asks." And that's what they'll do, whatever it is they believe God wants them to do.

And I think I can understand them [religious folks] just a bit better now, after pondering as I have. Tolstoy also noted that the poor people, the hard working people didn't seem to have this same problem of hopelessness. I think that it's really true that as long as you keep busy, you stay more satisfied with your life. Think about how it feels to be bored; it really bothers people. I notice it here, and it's so odd. We all hate having to do the work, and we hate that we have it all the time. We bitch and moan here about how we never get a break. And yet, when we do get breaks it seems like all I ever hear (and say) is "I'm bored!" Okay, maybe it's not all I hear, but I definitely think that we get bored way too quickly. I guess we (people) just aren't meant to do nothing. And if we do have nothing to do, we have to try to invent something for ourselves to do.

This, I think, makes things a bit trickier, but with a bit of creative thinking, I believe we can use this idea to get a better idea of culture, and beliefs, and a lot of human psychology. Think about high school, as an example. There are several real 'types' of people. Now obviously not everybody fits in a specific type, and that those who do fit in a type do have their own differences from others of that type, but I think that we've seen enough patterns. Think about the really hard working students. This doesn't seem to be the most common, but we have all seen folks of this type. It seems like she spends all of her time studying, or preparing for class, or participating in extra-curricular activities. She certainly has her friends, and they do stuff on the weekends, but for the most part she is focused on performing well in school. Now another type is the geek, brainy or not brainy. The brainy geek does well in school, and finds it to be really easy. He is different from the hard working student in that his main focus is not specifically school. School is boring, but easy, so he still makes sure he performs well, but he is less likely to be in student government or do other extra-curriculars like that. Instead, he might focus on an imaginary world in role playing, where he isn�t just doing homework. See, he forces this false reality on himself. In actuality he just does school, and because it is so easy and so boring, he can�t spend his time focused on school alone. There is otherwise nothing else to do, and a life of nothing is not an acceptable lifestyle. The stupid geek is in a similar situation as the smart one; the key difference is that school is too difficult for him as well as being uninteresting, so he chooses to ignore it. Instead, he�ll just spend all of his time playing video games. The jock type is similar; he blows off school in just the same way. Only, his alternate reality is sports and the social life. Why is it so important that he misses a day of classes to play a football game? Well, because football is his life, the only thing worth focusing on in his life.

So for the diehard student it�s school, for the geek it�s games, for the jock it�s sports, for the gossip it�s the activities of other students, for the band-geek it�s the band, etc. The reason that there is so little mixing between groups is that they really have trouble understanding each other at first. They literally have different realities. And this sort of thing exists in the real world too. I remember being at the grocery store one day, and I was in line behind a woman who had a coupon for every item in her shopping cart. They seemed to be the most random things for anybody to buy together. And when the cashier told her that some of the coupons were expired she immediately put back those items. What she took home from the grocery store that day was pre-decided by the advertisers that put out those coupons. I had no idea how to imagine what it would be like to be her, and was completely unable to understand how she thought. We have different realities.

I believe that many problems of depression occur because that person doesn�t feel that he has something to live for. He didn�t have enough to do to keep himself occupied all the time, and was unable to come with a reality for himself that made it seem that he had important stuff to do. If you think about it, as animals, what do we need to survive? We need a stable supply of food and water, a way to shelter/clothes/protect ourselves from our environment, and a place to live. In our modern world, this is far too easy to do. If everybody was focused on making food, water, houses or clothes we could work one day a week and survive just fine. But that is too boring. Who would want that? I certainly wouldn�t. We need TV, music, celebrities, God, sports, games, and a million other things to occupy our minds. We all fool ourselves into believing that we are satisfied with our lives and our struggles. But you know what? That�s good enough. It�s really a damn good thing, because if we stop to ask why we are living, we�ll see that we haven�t really got any good reasons. And that, my friends, is the depressing truth. Ignorance is bliss. And you can fool yourself into believing that it is really important that you do the things you do. And we already have fooled ourselves; that�s why we haven�t killed ourselves.

So, if you are depressed and unsatisfied with your life, maybe you should consider getting a new one. That is, reconsider what you feel is really important to you. Focus on it, and don�t stop believing that it is really important, because it is. It�s all you�ve got. It�s the damned most important thing in the world.