I can’t claim any good reasons for not writing much lately. Most of what I’ve had on my mind hasn’t been coherent enough to make a post. Therefore, I’m just going to ramble from one thing to another in this post.
I’ve been busy catching up on British television shows – specifically the new Doctor Who and Torchwood, which are very awesome. Torchwood is played later at night in the UK, so it has a fair amount of sex and violence in it. I’m pretty sure that out of the 26 episodes that currently make up the series, by far the majority of them featured more than one same-sex kiss. That would never go over on broadcast television in the US.
Netflix has a ton of old the old Doctor Who episodes online, so I may try to catch up there too. I don’t think Kathy has a lot of interest in the old show, so that’s going to go slowly, as I’ll have to catch an episode or two here and there when we’re not watching together. This doesn’t happen very often.
Speaking of my wife, she has been hanging out on the postmormon.org website a lot lately, helping people who are still struggling with their decision to leave. She was in the same boat ten years ago, and is glad to be able to help others.
I don’t know that I’ve posted much about my own religious views. I am agnostic, and can mostly sum up my position on the whole thing with this: I don’t know if there’s a god, and I since I won’t find out until I die, I don’t care one way or the other. I’ll live my life according to my own ideas of right and wrong, and if that’s not good enough, then I will face the consequences. Some might view that as sitting on the fence … but in the tradition of the Matrix, I believe there is no fence.
The libertarian (is this the small L or the big L?) idea of “your rights end where mine begin” has come to mind. This is an idea that most everyone can get behind … but I do wonder how many would willingly stand up and declare the slightly re-worded equivalent, which is “my rights end where yours begin.” To me, that is a much stronger ideal. It acknowledges the personal responsibility of ensuring that you don’t trample on others’ rights, whereas the former version relies on the other guy to be responsible. If we all assume someone else is going to get out of the way when we assert what we believe to be our rights, then everybody ends up stomping everyone else.
Today I took my car through the car wash. I had taken it through about a week and a half ago, but it rained the next day after blowing dust for several hours. This resulted in what my boss calls “Utah Mud Rain” … it was absolutely filthy. It looks a whole lot better now.
One response to “the twenty-first century is when it all changes”
That’s interesting, really, about the religion thing – I find myself in much the same position. While I would really *like* the idea of going full-on atheist, my mind wasn’t trained to be that unscientific – I keep coming back to that same thing over and over – “I don’t know” is the right answer. Like what happens on the other side of a black hole, ya know? It’s just – there’s only one way to find out, and it’s very much a one-way journey, so I’ll listen to all the theories going and reach my own conclusion.
Thus far, my conclusion is this: Spirituality is individual, may or may not be persistent beyond corporeal incarnation (anecdotal and circumstantial evidence on both sides of that argument), and is really, really screwed up by mass incorporation (organized religion).
-Gil