Just thinking...

Matthew 7:8 - Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. 

No, this isn't a Christian site. I'm an atheist actually, meaning that "I don't know" is the name of my deity, human connectivity is my higher power, and humanity's highest virtue is possible. 'I don't know' is my answer to the truly unanswerable...at this time, anyway...and it ignites my earnest quest. It's the opposite of resignation, has a center of calm, and is the beginning of  sitting comfortably with the unknowing, excited and ready to learn...with clarity. 

There's more than the rational or cogent mind (one divorced from life), and learning the critical difference between what is justified and what is sufficiently inferred and what is valid requires communication between us. Consensus is underrated! Humans who think "their" way is "the way" are deluded. Yet, we all proceed holding our value and evaluative systems. It's how you hold them that counts. There's a universality amongst us; discovering the source of that knowing is humankind's curious task, whether we admit it is irrelevant. However,  answering "the cause" without the endeavor to know together has always proved harmful.

Knowing:  how do humans know anything? Is it "in us" by Grace from some godhead? Is it derived from the formal rational conclusions divorced from universe-natural forces? Does it come from what the collective tells us? Is there such a thing as my truth/your truth? Are there no universal truths?? Yes, there are, and the headline we have agreed to call them is "reality." Reality is therefore important. Rather than believe me, ignore valid universal facts and just see what happens - go ahead, jump off the Empire State Building merely believing you will live - and you'll know the mistake of belief over the validity of reality. At the same time, the deductive truths that lay out reality as we know (in each moment we know anything at all) begin with wonder. We observe. We wonder. This is exactly what humans are built to do. Who or what built us? That's your own take and belongs nowhere but in your personal file folder called "my opinion." The values you live with, however, do not just belong to you -- you enact the and so you impact me, and all the flow of humanity. "Values held" turn into actions lived. Ethics, my friends, discuss our business. How we each live is, indeed, each others' business, but we may not enact our judgments without certain work to consult each other...not without reprise, anyway. We are also built to discuss those things. Fumble and stumble we will, but non-violence is demanded. Not by a god, not by a law, but because the motion in every human has its own course and it wants to survive and thrive.

That fact might be the only fact we need to cling onto together. From it, we enter the clash and match of our value systems; we negotiate. By activating an ascension brick-by-brick, we arrive and some-thing rather than nothing. Life sure brings us moments when we cannot "make sense" of certain things and it is human nature to insert an answer, desiring a perfect and absolute one at that. It seems scary, but if in these moments you utter -"I don't know" - and begin what must be an earnest quest to know - therein and perhaps only therein can you avoid what is actually scary. Absolute certainty is that thing. A max, I suggest, is 99.99%. Holding that .01% keeps you from being a lunatic. Source the "cause" of every despicable human act and you'll find someone claiming their 100% certainty—a human or group desperate for "an answer" through all of history is precisely what has led humans into cults and to perform horrific acts like inquisitions. Their surety seemed safe harbor, and they were wrong. 

Cause or Source - the meta reason for being - is indeed higher, bigger than my capability to process as I am today, yet every day offers the opportunity to ascend toward it. This may seem mysterious, but it's not. Every human has capacity to think; good thinking, however, takes the work to not presume. Mankind's best is in the how & why we arrive at our conclusions, as these form our value system which does all of our evaluating. Lead with presumption and your off on the wrong foot. Lead with wonder. Saying I Don't Know as a first step keeps me humble, despite what they say about atheists (clearly, they can't even properly define what an atheist is). This method of living also keeps me focused on humans, humanity and life, harmony and peace here, not the afterlife. If you ask me, every good faith has meant this as the highest good as well...they've just gotten stuck on a pathway issue. The very idea that we are born into a war between living life and our spirit, the very notion we are in a fight between good and evil, the non-sensical proposition that we are split between mind/body/soul -- each one a ruse. Anything which destructs in not toward our natural, better desire to survive and thrive. Anything which promotes survival and thriving for all, not one, is good. If humans could only define "good" we might get somewhere because good is good. It cannot be 'gooder' if it's divine, as Aristotle alludes. So how we arrive at our ethical practices, wrought from our e-value-ations, is what we need to negotiate together. Our basis? Goodness, aka continuance. The principle of infinity IN the mortal man as ultimate guide.

I have a purpose for living. How am I mostly sure of this? I'm here. No other justification is needed. I self-evidence. So do you. As to what I'm "supposed to do" while here can only be easily summed up by a word - Love. This poor, poor word has been so overused we forgot what it means. Certainly, I do not mean in some hippy-sense (sorry hippies!) nor one of the Judeo-Christian self-basing love, nor the Bodhisattva kind of total worthless. Love is not an ethereal notion! Love is an action based first on the motion wanting to be infinite, but having to negotiate our mortal finiteness. Ignore the negotiation, we self-destruct. I can illuminate this in every subject, from Quantum Physics to theology. What is not real is the idea of war or violence or even balance between two equal forces, with some one perfection in the middle. -1 plus +1 brings us to 0. 

This is my 99.99% sure philosophical meta conceit. Though it's not math-simple, and not just empirical, there is ...in motion... a universal truth of  a 1+ as the basis. That discussion would have to be by discipline, for the assigned names for this conceit are not synonymous. Oh were it! In any case, most of my posts will be about different ways of exploring a 1+ in ethics (though I'm open to discussing this in quantum physics, linguistics, etc. This idea, I hold, the Milesians and Aristotle came the closest to explicating, but ultimately drives everything we see, think, feel, do. Private message me if you want a serious philosophical dialogue by your discipline...we can negotiate and may arrive at a consensus! 

 Meanwhile, both self-love and inter-connected love...right here on Earth as much as in the natural universe...begins its quest earnestly because I breathe, you breathe, and (no matter how you cut it) we do live together. Our human condition, as far as I can tell, is just that. No one, no one, can live alone. In the long-view, we can all agree it turns out, is that the good stuff every human naturally seeks has never been achieved by ripping each other's eyes out, stealing, breaking hearts (negative life-acts). The divergent pathways have produced all of the universal axioms we need to know that together. Humans are our own self-evidencing forces; each value-positive within each others' equation. Again, this is not some Neo-mystical bullshit, nor my perfected truth. It's the reality that has created this gross sum, and with a .01 margin of error. Our interconnectivity is evident in everything from the start (we are born attached by an umbilical cord and are connected right on the ground, air, and water...like it or not). 

All this fighting, this 'my way' or 'yours' based on absolutist, presumptive belief is precisely what leaves us helpless and harmed -- my culture vs yours;  my side vs your side; 'what is meant to be'; and, 'what is determined for us' -- these are the very spoken words and thoughts that have and will fail humans again and again. But we cling on to these supposedly perfect answers that plainly, admittedly destruct! Why? The quest for absolutism or void versus engagement in motion that has a + force just is while we tend to focus on a 0 or a 1. And what do these two other views do? Separate and divide us, the opposite of interconnectivity and forward motion. We get self-consumed when we blind-eye the only thing we all know and indubitably want--positive motion together, aka love. Our design, not who designed it, is without our thoughts or conclusions or wishful thoughts. 

The only thing from what I see is that our is-ness was meant to be. That is metaphysically-true beyond us. In ethics, we may wish to avoid this meant-to-be thing. What the hell could 'meant to be' mean in any give life dilemma? Pause for half-a-second and you'll realize, when used in life, what this would mean: that a child murdered by a stray bullet was meant to be, chosen to be!, murdered while another child was not?  WTF. That's perfect? That's the good? A deity or a universe that is that conniving is rather disgusting to even contemplate. If your answer is that "It must be, and it's just that mortals can't see it" then you have: 1. aimed to pre-define God's will, which is pure hubris; 2. already self-destructed not just that child's worth of being, but even your own child's. In that case, no-thing has any value and yet you'd find it reasonable to suggest that He created beings to have no living value?? That would be one sick game -- to "put" humans on Earth and just hang out and watch the drama. That view, protest all you want, must mean that we were created for some kind of mindf*ck game of worthlessness. Wow. If you want to hold onto that, your choice. Meanwhile, nothing in life or spirit supports that as "good" in any way.

To hold faith of an ill-game, one of "chosenness," in moments of  despair...but still don't know why you despair and flippantly say "X must be meant-to-be"...is a recipe you cook. In my view, seeking consolation in an absurd game instead of feeling a despair in life as worthy of despair is bass-akward. On the other hand, deeming each living thing worthy of life and love prompts a reconsideration of worthiness itself, amends your value system, and brings out actions on Earth to change something for the better. Perhaps the other faith defined by one of worthlessness is a crime against humanity and whatever, whoever created each thing. Yes, if a child is killed in a drive-by, instead mourn their worth--help by addressing gang violence or something. Do something, not throw lip service at their worth by making them worthless to each of us! Could it be good, at all, to presume that that child's worth on Earth was to be cut short like that? It could be a good thing that this child was created only to be killed at four or whatever? I'm being rough here, yes, but only to show what is absurd and invalid from a most-spiritual concern. 

There are directions for how-to-live in how-to-know. We may slip along on that journey, but to skate on top of it is not very productive, nor kind, I'll add. A person of faith who holds a godhead who has chosen people or beasts or lifeforms can never proclaim themselves good because we all agree that is not good. Granted, mortals are naturally, perfectly imperfect merely because we're not omniscient. But to insist something is is the most conceited judgment ever laid out by a human. As we are here, even if we were put here, we're designed to seek to solve grief, fear, pain alone and together. Again, I do not have this; this is not mine; this is upon what we all silently agree. Always did. Always will. Yet, we don't live that.

We can. We can learn, for example, to learn from harm and be even more connected. It's not as simple as reaching into each other, listening, and to hold on tight...but there is no humanity or even a good god without it. I can't help but emphasize at this juncture: that view, the stream of reality, into which I have jumped is NOT positive-thinking. This phrase churns my stomach, not to mention the actual movement by Norman Vincent Peale is the most-vicious I can think of as a theological proposition. The damage this view creates the most primal human, a pack of vultures donning a dove costume. Don't get me started! Anyhow... 

Matthew 7:8 is perhaps a warning, not a promise or invitation to seek God but to seek (and one must do that when one is alive, and being alive means being existent in our mortal world). If you ask, you knock...and oh yes, you will find! Take those observations and get to work negotiating them -- non-violently, that is -- lest you fall into delusion. Be careful you do not have it backwards and find what you already seek. What I'm hoping to share, and receive feedback from you upon, is this: what can you do on this Earth? Sit with me and think together with me on the joy, the suffering, and even the mundane of our connectedness. I have assigned a value of 99.99% true on the idea that humans have a natural value of 1+.  #sitwiththat for a minute, and write me.  Signing off, happy living!