My life's philosophy

This was a response to my aunt's blog about my cousin not going to church, and it got too long, so here it is.

My sister, brother, and I are all agnostic or atheist, depending on how you define those terms. We were all forced to go to church every week growing up, and I was told that my grandma (o'neill) would be very disappointed if I wasn't confirmed, so I was. When Ian picked me as his confirmation sponsor, I told him if he didn't believe in God he should tell the priest that during their meeting. So Ian did not make his confirmation. I think religion is important enough that if you don't believe, you shouldn't pretend just for the sake of having a religion.

I also don't think that being religious or having faith in something higher always helps when you're in a tough spot. If anything I think that sometimes it can give a person a feeling of hopelessness because they think they can't control their own destiny. Or they sometimes blame a higher power for their terrible circumstances. Sometimes crap just happens and it's random. If you're constantly looking for an outside explanation for things, I think it distracts you from focusing on how to fix problems yourself. People often need help, but you can get that kind of help from family, friends, the government, or medicine.

Often I find myself wondering how religion even came about to begin with. Why do people have to explain everything? When you see geographical formations or how animals reproduce, why does that have to have a great big meaning? Can't it just be how it is? I mean, there are lots of good reasons to study the earth, particularly so we can predict what will happen to it in the future, but does it have a greater meaning? I don't think so. I don't think there's anything terribly wonderful going on with the earth or with people. Maybe something great is happening somewhere else in the universe but I doubt that too. What's the greatest thing you can imagine happening? World peace or an end to poverty or disease? Leaving aside the fact that eradicating disease would create overpopulation and more war, would any of these things matter?

The only things I can say that really matter are the things that affect me, because I'm the only person that I have control over or whose life I can directly change. I don't say that in the manner of, "Fuck everyone else, I'll throw my cigarette butts on the ground if I want," I just mean it in a practical sense. Do I care if over a third of Americans are obese? Only because it directly raises my insurance costs. If they want to kill themselves with overeating, it's not my concern. If we found a cure for obesity, I wouldn't sleep any better at night. If I were the one responsible for curing obesity, what would that get me beyond a big salary and some fame? Nothing. Because there's no goal in life. Whether you save millions of peoples lives or spend your whole time on earth mopping bathrooms in a high school, you die the same way.

If you think that something happens after you die, then my philosophy does not apply to you. If you are a person who believes in heaven or hell or reincarnation, then maybe what you do in life makes some difference later. There are a lot of people who believe this, and if it's true, then someone else is making the judgment call on how "good" my life was. Whoever it is, I have no way of knowing what they consider "good" or "bad" and so I think people who believe in an afterlife should still just be doing what they want.

Anyway, that's my life philosophy. Do whatever you want to the extent that it doesn't harm other people. Harm is also a relative term. If you're in sales, you're probably causing people to buy things they don't really need. It's debatable whether that harms them or not. I'm just going to do what makes me happy (with a future benefit to current cost analysis) for the rest of my life. If you're not doing what makes you happy then you should change what you're doing. If you can't change what you're doing then you should kill yourself and save yourself the misery of being alive. If saving the world makes you happy, then try for it. If working in customer service makes you happy, then do that, and don't be ashamed of it. Just don't pussy out and act like you have no control. Oh, my boss sucks, I hate my job, well then change careers, switch departments, take a pay cut to be happy, don't be a miserable asshole your whole life just for some job security. When you're about to die you'll just regret your life, and you don't get another one.