A Trifle From Life

A friend of mine sent me this yesterday:



After searching for "Paul Robertson" I found his livejournal page, and quickly found myself sucked into a mad world where Christian Furries have public fights with their significant others in open blog comments while simultaneously displaying a startling sensitivity to the irony of "human tragedy" when it appears in others:

Bio: Well, I'm a 19 guy and I was born in 1987.I'm hopeing to make a living out of being a Comic/Manga artist and writer. I prefer to go by the name of A.J. Ever since I was 2 I've had an obsession with trains, Steam Trains to be more specific. Well for my childhood, I had no child hood. I lived with my grandmother for a period of time and she gave me a very sheltered life. Well I'm past that now( Thank God!!!) and now I'm trying to live my life to the fullest. I'm a Christian, I've been one for as long as I can remember. I'm also a member of the Furry Community, many of the characters I have in my stories are furrs. My fursona is a 28 year old Tiger/Human hybrid, he is also the main Character in my story "Gunpowder Falls". He is a locomotive engineer who works for the Gunpowder Falls Railroad in the year 1885(Alternate Reality). Many of the strories I have are Sci-Fi Westerns wich allows me to have furry characters in a "Western" setting. To be perfectly honest I have no experience in jounal writing so I'm hoping to get some practice in doing it.

Meanwhile, as I'm slavishly indulging my morbid curiosity here, my TV downstairs is tuned to some evangelical guy (didn't seem like a preacher, or at least, he wasn't acting in that capacity) graciously explaining to us all about the fulfillment of biblical prophesy in the modern incarnation of the state of Israel and bordering just a bit on the Conspiracy Theory side of life while he was doing it.

And at that moment, a feeling, a mood , a thought that has visited me in the past returned full force, "Life is a comedy."

Or a bizarre passing spectacle anyway. Well, actually, I'm extremely privileged to live in such an economically developed time and place, where the universe can appear as a "spectacle" rather than "existential struggle." That's the punch line! The more an agent is engaged in the struggle for existence the less interested they are in in the question of it's meaning. It's the ones who's burdens are less that have the free time to wonder such things.

"I have frequently experienced myself the mood in which I felt that all is vanity; I have emerged from it not by any philosophy, but owing to some imperative necessity of action. If your child is ill, you may be unhappy, but you will not feel that all is vanity; you will feel that the restoring of the child to health is a matter to be attended to regardless of the question of whether there is ultimate value in human life or not. ... The feeling is one born of a too easy satisfaction of natural needs. The human animal, like others, is adapted to a certain amount of struggle for life, and when by means of great wealth homo sapiens can gratify all his whims without effort, the mere absence of effort from his life removes an essential ingredient of happiness. The man who acquires easily things for which he feels only a very moderate desire concludes that the attainment of desire does not bring happiness. If he is of a philosophic disposition, he concludes that human life is essentially wretched, since the man who has all he wants is still unhappy. He forgets that to be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness." -Bertrand Russell

But for those blessed with leisure time (and a mind) the strangeness of the world must be apparent. I'm neutral toward "Chaos" according to this highly scientific Advanced Personality Test. The world really is very bizarre, and everybody seems to have a philosophy that deals with this fact: some people embrace it, some are freaked out by it. I think this may be where the puritan impulse originates.

Hey, I called the the blog "Non Rigorous" for a reason! And do I ever intend to do some idle speculation!

Ultimately, I think that my cognitive style is to embrace "chaos" where I can't order it.

A friend of mine put it best:

When I asked him, "What happens when Mind Control become a reality?"

He Replied, "Mind Control is real..."

I gave him a look like, "What chu talkin bout Willis?"

"You gotta role with the punches."

Now THAT cracks me up! It's Zen like advice... What is the solution to ANY problem? Spontaneity! Is that Naive?