Modesty

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This is a thought which actually takes a poem form, but according to the topic I felt it best went here. Hopefully it won't be moved as I wish it to produce a different vein of discussion than a creative writing piece.

Modesty

I.

I often shake my head
at the human apes—sapiens—
with their two-glial-cells-to-every-neuron
(even shaking my head at my own
small self).
Funny, we humans wander around
on our technological playgrounds, buying our toys
because they’re so damned important
that we can’t live without them
(even when we’re dead).
We even pay money to rest comfortably in death--packed in ice
and hopeful
till we can be brought back out of it
to play with our toys some more.—
Even though age and illness have tagged
our skin with wrinkles and wrinkled our hearts
by the time we finally exhale, finally—
existence is that important. And we want all of it.
And till then we wander aimlessly, proclaiming
our meanings of life and purposes and philosophies,
wearing our particulars on our ignoble shoulders,
so much that we often forget we are still living, and only the dead
can answer our questions but who are too busy
waiting, like us, to finish living again.
And how funny it is—I can’t believe how funny—
that one day we will simply vanish, all of us,
back into the universe that had once offered us up
to begin with.
Our playgrounds and toys overrun by lava or wild growth
or infested by the insects that we tried so hard to quell and kill.
Or vanished altogether perhaps.
And our sweet and precious philosophies will be leveled along side us;
knocked indifferently to the ground for the next revolution,
and the next--
just to be built up by someone else after us, again and again
and again.

Last edited by Sophist on 25 May 2005, 9:56 pm, edited 9 times in total.

wow, me like.
/Morlock

Moral of the story: Don't be a cynic. Don't be a zealot. Just live life and be happy and gratfeul while you can.

CARPE DIEM

Wow, maybe I'm just reading it wrong, but Be a cynic because all the things you thought had purpose and meaning will just crumble into dust is the main message I'm getting from this.

Why must humanity be ignoble because we are built of biological matter which ages and fades? Why must the search for meaning - through technology or philosophy or whatever method one chooses - be a futile thing that lies at odds with happiness?

Curiosity about the environment is hardwired into the human brain. Happiness and purpose are irrevocably intertwined. To serve happiness without purpose leads to greed and gluttony; to serve purpose without happiness leads to cynicism and depression. It's the journey, not the destination, that matters the most, but a journey still must go from point A to point B.

What do you think?

Yes, I realized that this poem, after I had written it, came out more cynical than I had intended. Thus the need for the addendum Moral of the Story. But despite the cynicism, I wanted to show that humans are impermanent, and despite all our grand ideas, these are as impermanent as we are. This is not to say that we shouldn't have them, but we should be wary and accept our morality and perhaps learn more modesty in our dealings. Granted, the poem went further than I had wanted, but I wished to bring the point across that we are so small in the cosmic makeup.

The Carpe Diem, true, was not included in the poem but would perhaps be a suitable after-poem. A II in a cycle poem even... I shall revise Modesty ever-slightly, atm.

Maybe I am the one who got it wrong, because to me the moral of the story says: NIHLISM! All of existence will crumble into dust. So there's no need to build or to think anyway.

I have a problem with nihilism myself. Mainly because I am unable to refute it! I just try to stay as much as possible away from it.

Why life matters? To whom it matters? To me? But I'll soon turn into dust!

Anyway, fortunately, nihilistic ideation is so alien to our everyday thinking that it never gets to be the core of my thoughts.

I agree with you on this. Life is a journey, and to me it is not important were the journey will lead to. What matters the most is the journey itself. My purpose is to create the most wonderful journey possible for me.

But I see the relationship between happiness and purpose in a slightly different manner. I think that happiness IS the purpose of living. And the purpose of living is to achieve happiness. I can see no purpose higher than that. Do you?

I would suspect Nihilism is a good thing if it makes one value even more the time one has. Otherwise, it is wholly depressing.

Being Atheist, I don't like the idea of when I die, that's it. But I cannot deny that from what I have seen the evidence points that way, for me at least. I envy those who believe in an afterlife. Whether or not it is true, it certainly makes dying a bit easier.

But I do enjoy a quote I read which gives me comfort:
From my rotting body, flowers shall grow and I am in them and that is eternity.
~Edvard Munch

I would rather have a level of consciousness after I die, but I guess if my body keeps going on into other things and recycling its usefulness, that isn't so bad either.

I had a thought about that: if I will make my way into other things/creatures, what other things/creatures are now a part of me? It would be kewel to know if I had a bit of dinosaur or sabre tooth tiger or some other creature in me. hehe. Just a thought.

Once again I must say, this is why I love coming here. When I encounter thoughts such as these they have such weight to me. Most people just shrug them off. But I will die this I know with some certainty. And our societies and wars and religions will become the relics and anecdotes of some future society, or will become nothing at all as they once always were. I sometimes marvel at all the billboards along the highway. How they have meaning only to us. Any aliens or gods looking down on them would certainly find them pretty silly. We are truly "dust in the wind"
But the fact that I am able to marvel at all of this is marvelous to me.
It is in fact the only thing I have found of any signifigance. To gaze in awe at this mystery that produced me and will one day consume me.
I heard a quote once that said "we are the universe trying to understand itself." That sums it up for me. And I think that when "I" cease to be, there will only be awe, without any end or begining.

I don't care too much what happens to my body after I die (for the record, I'm agnostic) but if I'm going to live on at all, I want it to be through my creations. Even if my consciousness is gone, art/writing/games/other media would still stand a chance of influencing people.

Not that it really matters, since I wouldn't be around to see it. But I expect my opinion on that one will change as I get older and closer to death.

I think I'd rather be created but hope too that some of my art would survive me and that some people could appreciate it.

Hey Pyraxis. Haven't seen you here in a while!

As a friend of mine told me once, "Modesty sucks."