A random list of things we can live without

Throughout history mankind has engaged in oodles and oodles of diatribes pertaining to magic, religion, science, atheism, paganism, pantheism, agnosticism shamanism, secularism, spiritualism. I for one have participated in many such erudite discussions. But do we really need to diversify so much?  What difference does it make if it is his God, your God, our God, my God or no God at all? Can’t we forget all that and carry on with our lives without fighting? Maybe I am being overly optimistic here, but I still believe that one day we would decompartmentalize ourselves and focus more on humanity than religion.

Can’t we go back into the past, kill a few people like Ted Bundy, Albert DeSalvo, Jack the Ripper and many many more (I’m aware of the fact that they are all dead, but my point is they transcended to the netherworld in a much more dignified way than they deserved) and eliminate all the atrocities and start from the scratch, give this world a whole new beginning. Just a pipe dream I guess. 

Sometime life sucks, it just does okay. And no human being, no God, no relative, no friend, no spiritual Guru, no help book can stop you from plummeting into that abyss of nothingness. Remember that movie, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Here were a group of people sucking the hind tit for no apparent reason when I could hardly distinguish between the sane and the insane, the good and the evil in the movie. Meh! I can’t even tell the difference in real life. Maybe those people wanted to stay there, remember the line Morgan Freeman used in The Shawshank Redemption after one of his friend was released from the prison on parole, he said “Brooks got institutionalized.” Brooks never made it outside the penitentiary. Why? Because the world is not devoid of misery whether in or out.

What I need is a great guy friend to have esoteric conversations with. Like every time we see each other we'd slip into profound discussions about diverse ideas such as morality, essentialism, nihilism, existentialism, phenomenology etc. 

Can I ask you to read Dr Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning? Dr Frankl’s Logotherapy is mega awesome. Existentialism emphatically explains the causes of inner angst, the pitfalls of objectivity, the sense of apathy in jarring conditions and the sense of provisional existence of unknown limit that Dr Frankl and his fellow prisoners endured in the concentration camp, notwithstanding, Dr Frankl doesn't condone all the ideas of existentialism because somehow he cannot see individualism as a binary opposite to collectivism (or at least that is my interpretation of his text). My favorite part of the book is towards the end where Dr Frankl quite assuredly says "life has meaning under all circumstances, even the most miserable ones." Finally concluding this book with the case for tragic optimism- argumenta ad hominem, giving us hope to live life to the fullest despite all the sufferings.

Why is the world inundated with didactic bullshit. Do we really need to consult the book of “normalcy and righteousness” before choosing our pursuit of happiness?

Funnily enough I want the world to frown upon my morbid intellect and at the same time be jealous of it. 


© [Ankita Mukherjee] and [ankitamukherjee2014newnhamcambridge], [2014]. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to [Ankita Mukherjee] and [ankitamukherjee2014newnhamcambridge] with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.