Naughty Naughty Boy

“If heaven is such a wonderful place, then how is getting crucified such a big fucking sacrifice?”

- Igby Goes Down (2002)

Writing about religion feels like an animal walking through a game park. There are people waiting to blow your head off, skin it, and mount in on a wall.

No better reason to do it then.

Faith. How much evidence does one need before it becomes truth? If enough people believe, do you doubt your own beliefs because you are the minority?

Peter Joseph’s 2007 documentary Zeitgiest raises some interesting points about Christianity. It shows many similarities with ancient Egyptian theology, a practice based on respect and adoration for the sun.

The sun, which rises every morning to overcome darkness, bring warmth, and nourish crops. That descends in the northern sky during the winter equinox on December 22th, falls under the Southern Cross constellation, stops moving for three days then rises again on December 25th where it is aligned with Sirius - the star from the east, and the Three Kings - the three brightest stars of Orion’s Belt.

The documentary states Egyptians worshipped the sun’s movements so much they personified them into the god Horus. Born December 25th accompanied by three kings and an eastern star, Horus brought light and warmth to the world, conquered darkness, died for three days, and then rose again.

Three thousand years later, Christianity translated the movements of the sun into their own deity – Jesus Christ.

It gives examples of other ancient gods which had similar lives to Jesus Christ. Attis and Dinoysus from Greece, Krishna from India, Mithra from Persia. All had virgin births on December 25th accompanied by three kings and a star from the east, performed miracles during their life, died for three days, and were resurrected.

These figures were simply mythical personifications of the sun.

Now, Zeitgeist is not the world’s greatest documentary but what if it’s true? What if Christianity is nothing more than an adaptation on the ancient Egyptians’ adoration for the sun?

Take two rats in a cage. A box is placed in the cage with a hole in it. One rat crawls into the box and receives an electric shock. The other rat sees this and stays away. The first rat is then replaced with a new one. The old rat warns the new one to stay away from the box because he saw his friend get shocked. Then the old rat is removed and replaced with another new rat. Now there are two rats in the cage that are staying away from the box, based on a handed-down story.

Neither of them saw the electric shock, yet they stay away.

That’s the whole point about faith. We take things as truth even when we don’t know why. We follow obediently without question or rationality, as if motivated by a mystical force.

Maybe the real motivation behind religion can be found back on earth.

Proponents of positive thinking say believing in good things becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. What better way to promote positive thinking than believing a higher power is protecting and guiding you? A power that is all-knowing and all-powerful. To have that on ones side must surely be a confidence booster.

Maybe that’s why people choose to be religious. To gain strength and confidence to get through the day. But people can’t admit that. Our highly intelligent minds need two thousand year old handed-down stories to justify things that are scientifically flawed.

It’s ok. Faith is inherently blind, it needs no justification. The more people try to justify religion, the more ridiculous it sounds.

Just believe.

Or don’t.

Plug In Baby

One of the great things about The OC was the ease of the characters’ interactions. Seth popped across to Ryan’s pool house, Summer came over and knocked on Seth’s bedroom door, all and sundry would get past Summer’s evil “step-monster” to enter her pillowed abode.

The degree of social contact was enviable, people would make the effort to spend time with each other. Writer Josh Schwartz took the piss out of “Seth-Ryan” time, but it showed people’s desire for connection and the effort required once established.

To avoid losing credibility, The OC will no longer be mentioned.

It does raise a serious point though. Are people in the real world making the same effort to establish and maintain social connections?

Richard Watson, author of Future Files: A History of the Next 50 Years, discussed this recently using “cuddle parties,” gatherings where complete strangers provided each other with non-sexual intimacy. Fast food on demand? Try physical comfort and reassurance on demand.

Sounds ridiculous? How about this. Businessmen in Japan, overworked and stretched to the limit are resorting to intravenous cures for “three-thirty-itis”. Infusions of vitamins and minerals are given by health boutiques to boost energy and provide sustenance for the working day.

Not that ridiculous considering a certain AFL football team decided the best way to treat dehydration was to infuse saline intravenously during the half-time break.

It’s all just too easy.

And this is Richard Watson’s point. Time is money. Efficiency is everything. If we spend less time and money interacting with people or improving our health then we’ve won haven’t we? We’re a more efficient society.

Why bother going over to your friend’s house for a chat, when you can sit in your bedroom and talk to seven friends simultaneously on instant messaging? That’s far more efficient.

Better still, why go to the effort of talking when you can Super-Poke your two hundred “friends” on Facebook to show them how much you care. Social interaction en masse, the pinnacle of efficiency.

We’re better connected than before. High speed broadband, wide mobile phone networks, instant messaging. It’s all bullshit. Where’s the quality in our connections? Human adaptability is an admirable trait, but sometimes works against us. If we don’t need to make the effort, we won’t. We’re too smart for our own good.

However, there’s another human trait that’s as important.

Physical presence provides a degree of comfort and well-being that no amount of intravenous vitamins could compete with. It stimulates on many levels, and is unquantifiable in its ability to invigorate and renew.

So, next time you’re sitting alone waiting to log on to WiiConnect, just stop and think.

Is the internet your only connection that needs upgrading?

Happy Little Vegemites

It’s one of our most basic emotions, yet so fleeting and inaccessible for many. Twenty billion dollars a year are spent on pharmaceutical solutions to treat our chronic lack of serotonin.

Surely there must be a better way.

The problem is, modern man is chronically unhappy. Due to accesibility, he wants too much, expects too much, and wants it all now. If he can get a Happy Meal with five food groups and a toy in three minutes without leaving his car, shouldn’t he expect the same in other areas of his life?

So he tries, he constantly searches for things to make him happy. Successful career, braggable hobbies, supermodel partner, two and a half kids. The perfect life. Surely this will bring everlasting happiness?

Well, there are a few fundamental problems.

Firstly, these sources are external. Our influence is inherently limited, we can only do so much to change things before we are at the whim of other people’s emotions and the fickle hand of fate. You can trim the sails as best you can, but the wind will always direct the boat.

Secondly, all these sources are fleeting and transient. The impermanence of life is reflected in its components. Jobs don’t last, supermodel partner gets a better offer, holidays come to an end. Add unpredictability to impermanence, and the only thing you can guarantee is that there is no guarantee.

Lastly, transient sources of happiness are similar to recreational drugs. The more you take, the lesser the effect. The human body becomes densensitised and tolerant. So we need more. The bigger car, rapid career progression, holidays in more expensive hotels. It’s a unrelenting search for increasing levels of happiness.

So, what’s the better way? Well, take the monk. Wearing a bedsheet, head shaven, under a tree contemplating why that cloud looks like an apricot and the other looks like a squashed pomegranate. He’s not even wearing underwear and he’s the happiest man on earth. How is this possible?

He simply chooses to be happy.

Instead of running around looking for sources of happiness, he increases his basal level of happiness. He achieves chronic happiness independant of external stimuli. It then doesn’t matter what happens, because he is already happy.

On a physiological level, choosing to be internally happy has similar effects to meditation which functional magnetic resonance imaging has shown to increase levels of serotonin in the brain.

Well that’s very cute but we can’t all sit around all day wondering why clouds resemble fruit. It’s shit boring.

And that’s the beauty of it. Because we are running on internal happiness, we no longer need to do things to make us happy. We do them for the best reason of all - because we want to.

We stop becoming hostages of ourselves, demanding we find happiness from everything. We are free to do whatever we want, knowing the outcome is irrelevant. Failure ceases to be a demon of fear. It becomes an undesired outcome that gives up experience, whilst not taking our happiness.

This allows us to enjoy the ride, appreciating things for what they are, not for what we want to get out of them. We don’t need to rush around desperately searching for happiness.

Because we already have it.

All is Full of Love

"I'm not a smart man, but I know what love is."

- Forest Gump (1994)

Wrong. I don’t think anyone really knows what love really is. We know the feelings it provokes, but it largely remains a mysterious force shrouded in chocolates and Hallmark cards.

Maybe love is when you really like someone, think about them all the time and have an inner desire to spend every moment with them. The mere thought of them sends warm shivers up your spine. Whenever they contact you, you shriek in amazement. And you constantly long for anything that reminds you of them.

Well, no. That's limerance. A superficial feeling based on intense romantic desire for another person. A desire that demands reciprocation to be validated otherwise the limerant person experiences immense distress and feelings of abandonment.

Maybe love is when you choose to care about someone, motivated by an inexplicable feeling of concern. To commitedly cater for their every need and want. Psychologist Robert Sternberg's 1986 Triangular Theory of Love yields seven different types of love. Each has a combination of passion, intimacy, and commitment. Only four have commitment as a component, so maybe it isn't that crucial after all?

And is the love negated if the commitment is obligated? It could be argued that the love between parent and child is born out of biological obligation. That a morally sound parent will always care for a child not necessarily out of love, but out of moral duty. Put simply, it’s the right thing to do. Is this love different to the one that two complete strangers create by their own volition?

Maybe love happens when two people simply agree to put up with each other. When they understand each others imperfections and embrace them. When they agree to unconditionally commit to each other exclusively, selflessly providing reliant support that eases them through life’s challenges. When they are held together by an unexplicable attraction, one that our highly intellectual minds are unable to fathom.

“Every asshole says they love somebody, it means nothing. What you feel only matters to you. It’s what you do to the people you say you love, that’s what matters.”

- The Last Kiss (2006)

Enough already. Hand me a bucket.