Some people like children and want to have children. And having children will make them more satisfied than not having children. And for one person it might be 1 child while for another it might be 3 or 4 that maximize their satisfaction. But knowing which is best is probably is just an educated guess (at best) – an a priori deduction based on a subjective analysis of self in comparison to others’ experience. What could be a source of pleasure at 1 could easily become a source of torment at 3 or 4. Hopefully the subject gets it right.
And for other people, it’s not children. It might be cats. And for another it might be dogs. And again, it might be 1 cat or dog or 3 or 4 cats or dogs. Or even a mix of cats and dogs that gives them the most satisfaction/comfort. But knowing the best fit ahead of time is almost impossible. We’re guided mostly by intuition, I guess. And when we guess wrong, sometimes we just make the best out of the situation.
But it’s rare to be able to admit when you were wrong. We tend to stubbornly cling to knowing ourselves well enough that the decision we made was the right one for us. We’re stubborn and narcissistic. And too dumb to know how dumb we are by denying our dumbness.
For another person it might be neither children nor nor dogs. For them it may be raising horses or pigs or ducks on a farm.
And for another, it’s none of those. It’s solitude. The solitude that comes from engaging with his own mind or books or art more than God or people or ducks or cats. But that solitude’s a choice too. And though it may have come about by choice or by chance as simply the consequence of our personality, that doesn’t mean it is necessarily the better mode of your particular being. You may have guessed wrong. Or simply accepted what was wrong for you.
And why can’t spirituality in its varied forms be seen as the same? There’s transcendental purpose through attachment to God. Perhaps a Buddhist transcends differently. And some folks don’t give a fuck about transcendence, seeking and finding pleasure and fulfillment in the material. But all of it’s a choice. And you may be right or wrong in choosing what’s best for you, not unlike choosing 3 cats over 1 child. Or solitude versus a wife and three kids.
But if Jesus or Buddha or Shiva or nothing gives you satisfaction, then that choice may be what’s best FOR YOU. And if it’s cats or dogs or children or ducks or nothing, then what’s wrong with that?
Now, when it comes to religion, some of us want to insists on pure reason and make it a moral point when, in fact, it’s mostly a matter of wanting other people to be more like us. That way, it would help confirm our choice (or congenital temperament) as the proper one. So the antagonism (either real or necessarily perceived) against those with differing beliefs make sense, in a way.
It’s logical in the sense that choosing 3 cats was logical, not a pure whim. It came from some analysis of the self. Of knowing yourself better than if you’d chosen something completely absurd, like devoting yourself to the cultivation of trees that yield platinum peanuts. But knowing yourself doesn’t necessarily imply knowing yourself well. But we don’t want to admit that. That’s an admission to a certain level of nativity, if not stupidity.
I don’t begrudge you for preferring cat or dogs or children or ducks to nothing. In fact, it probably makes you wise in knowing what works best for you. And your satisfaction in choosing horses doesn’t make me feel stupid or threaten my way of life or intelligence because I chose otherwise.
Perhaps I have no necessity for transcendental attachment just as I have no proclivity to raises horses or dogs or children. And in the absence of the feeling of attachment for the transcendental, I prop up reason, since it’s all I got left. But it’s a silly thing, perhaps, to have any more faith reason than Jesus or those dogs and cats. Cause who knows, 1 dog may have been better for me than 3 cats. But “reason” as intuition (the opposite of reason) led me here, where there’s nothing but it. And I can accept it/reason without force feeding myself the notion that it was necessarily right.
And maybe I should do that same for you. In choosing God, accept that it may be right for you, accepting your choice without threat or antagonism to who I am or what seems to guide me.
I imagine there are people who come home from the stress and pressure of a hard day’s work – the pointlessness and stupidity of it all….the labor and the people – and when they come home, maybe they need something. And the company of a husband or cat’s probably better than the company of the bottle. And just cause they want it and I don’t, don’t necessarily make them weak. It might make ‘em smarter than me who tries finding his satisfaction through bullshit like this, will little success. But my reason (or intuition) nags at me that it might be the better FOR ME than the alternatives. After all, I’ve never much cared for kids or ducks and God don’t my appeal to all I got left, which is this exaggerated/inflated sense of my own reason. And in sticking with reason, I could merely be choosing 1 child over that farm full of ducks and horses, when the child would have been better, but stubbornly and narcissisticly not wanting to admit that having chosen to have only 1 child, then feeling like, far too late, that 3 or 4 mighta done the trick better.
In all this I’ve given too much thought to children and dogs and cats and horses and chickens, and neglected the cold blooded reptile as a source of satisfaction. So, to be fair, I wanna include reptiles too. And in doing so, I decided to look up what lovers of reptile are and, sure enough, they got a name: Herpetolophiliac. But here’s the curious thing. When you look up “lover of cats” you get: ailurophile, described generally as one who likes or loves cats, without much further connotation.
Herpetophiliac, on the other hand, seems to refer, generally, to a person with a sexual attraction toward reptiles (with monitor lizards being particularly fetishized). In the furry community, they are called Herpes. And from there, if you explore enough, you might learn as well about formicophilia (sexual attraction to insects) as well as crossover between herpetophilia and macrophilia – sexual arousal from giants, which, in this case crossbreed into sexual arousal by dinosaurs.
Sometimes ya stumble across some strange things in trying to figure out a thing or two about religion and/or yourself.
So what the shit. Own what you want, worship what you want (or nothing) and fantasize about fucking what you want. Enjoy and be satisfied.
mrobins71 