This idea caught me by surprise. I had never really thought about how the contemplation of eternity or the afterlife is a form of leisure. I think it is a pretty broad definition of the word leisure though since there are people who are employed and working hard to think on these things. Nonetheless, it isn’t the primary creative purview of people laboring to survive at an existential level. It’s for those who have the time to contemplate it, right?
Interesting secondary thoughts
is this true of all aspects of religion, not just the afterlife?
A pet peeve of mine are the Facebook posts that brag about how great the past used to be. How we didn’t have seat belts and we didn’t die, how we didn’t have the internet and we played in the mud and we didn’t die. How we had respect for our elders and we didn’t die. That grandma cooked things from the garden and from stuff given by a neighbor and we didn’t die.
The upshot of all that is ‘The past we had was great because we didn’t die.’
There is then of course a comparison to now. Now we have fat kids on the internet who don’t play in the mud and they are going to die. We have seat belt laws and that takes away our freedom to die. Other peoples’ kids are brats and they are going to cause themselves or others to die. Our country is going down the toilet because of all these terrible people who weren’t raised right and that is going to cause us to die.
The upshot of that second part is, ‘the past was much better, the present sucks and the future is going to suck even more and as a result we are all going to die.’
Style and Culture
And this really shows up in style and culture. The saggy pants? They show humanity has fallen. Forget that the same person who says the saggy pants suck also says the old style of the high waisted shorts from the 80s suck too. Low sucks, high sucks.
Music today sucks of course. Why? Because it’s not the old music, which was much better and proved we were geniuses back then. And people allegedly making music now? They suck and their music sucks because they aren’t as great as we were.
It All Sucks
Here is the truth; if you think the present and future suck it’s because you are becoming an old curmudgeon who has forgotten how your grandparents said the same thing about your generation. It’s because you gave up on discovering new music and movies and art and literature. It’s because you are afraid to see your world disappear but you are even more afraid to explore the world today. So you sit and complain about things you haven’t really explored or tried to understand. You judge because judging feels good and backs up your prejudices and inclinations.
It’s All Great
Here is another truth; the youngest generation doesn’t really care what you think. They are on to you. They listen to your rant and know you are speaking from ignorance. They know their music is awesome and their art, and their movies. They know their food and attitudes and work ethic and a million other things are just fine. They don’t need your approval.
Barbarian Truth
The truth is the worst of the older generation has ALWAYS condemned the world to destruction at the hands of the younger Barbarians at the gates. Ancient Greek curmudgeons complained about the younger generation 3,000 years ago and it hasn’t stopped yet.
How To Not Be A Curmudgeon
And the other truth is the best of the older generation stays open to what each new generation has to offer and does it’s best to understand it on the new generation’s terms, not their own. They keep an open mind about music and art and tattoos and clothing and style and words and sex and ways of understanding the world. They are the ones who stay young and engaged in the world today.
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Drawing and rant by Marty Coleman
Quote by Yogi Berra, 1925 – not dead yet, American Baseball player and Paul Valery, 1871-1945, French poet
Aren’t you lucky! It’s a ‘two-quotes-for-the-price-of-one’ luck napkin.
I put these two together on the same napkin because they are the carnal and intellectual sides of the same coin.
I like being older. I like having more wisdom than I used to. I like to think that I am a better person than I used to be. But I also know that that ‘wisdom’ is, in many cases, the stacking up of suitcases full of experiences. They are stacked in such a way that my ‘wisdom’ seems to have come from some far off place, but the reason I can see things as I do is because I have this great view from atop the suitcases.
I also know that that great view can make me think more of myself than I should. I can start to preen and strut that I have such a great view, that I have had such good luck. I start to think I made it all happen. That is the exact thought, if personified, would put the rocks in my path to make me trip.
Once again, humility is key in understanding luck and and living with good fortune.
This is an homage to all the scientists out there, including my incredible eldest daughter, Rebekah, a Ph.D. candidate in Neuroscience at George Mason University in Virginia.
The heart of science, from the beginning, when it was one and the same with religion, is to find out why things are the way there are and how to fix, change, improve, build upon, or just understand as much as possible.
To be a good scientist you have to withstand the appearance of absurdity in what you seek. Like the paleontologist looking for bones, having to answer questions from his mother or father about how he can make a living, or what good it will do to find some old bone anyway.
Or the cosmologist who has the engineer for a best friend who chides her for always having her head beyond the clouds and never producing much while she, on the other hand, has built a car or a bridge or something practical.
But it is the scientist who will discover where we came from, where we are going, who we are, how we can survive, what kills us, what saves us, and why it is so. It is the scientist who is searching and in the searching, absurd as it seems, is finding and becoming great in the process.
I love scientists.Pass this on to one you love, too!
The key is in the digestion. How does it become you? It becomes you by being eaten in your stomach by all sorts of nasty stuff that you don’t want to know about, mainly acids, enzymes and bacteria. Yum.
I had a conversation a while back with a friend who stated that no argument ever changed her mind. She went on to describe that she once was a conservative, fundamentalist christian; anti-homosexual, anti-feminist, anti-abortion, anti-everyone who didn’t believe what she believed.
She is no longer like that. She now believes that homosexuals are equal to anyone else and should have the exact same rights as everyone else. She believes that other religions have just as much ‘truth’ in them as does Christianity and she doesn’t see any need to try to change them. She has changed her own religion to Paganism. All the while she said that arguments don’t ever persuade her. And maybe that is true.
It made me think that maybe the argument is the meal on the plate before you eat it. The change in belief is after you have eaten and the arguments have had time to digest inside you and become part of you.
