Finding My Beliefs

Apr 12th, 09 / 1 Comment

Religiously speaking, I used to identify myself as a Christian. This was mostly a label, as I don’t really believe the only way to salvation is through Jesus. I tended to identify as Christian more because I believe in a concept of God similar to that of the loving God many Christians follow. Jesus, I see as an enlightened teacher who was doing his best to bring us closer to said God. But I also think most religions have some truth to them, and they also have some damaging material in them, so I’m not big on organized religion for myself. I’m much bigger on looking for the truth myself, and on discussing beliefs with other people to see where they stand, and what I can learn from them.

I don’t hold to the idea that choosing the wrong religious beliefs will earn anyone a place in Hell. There are at least two religions I know of that in some way claim this to be true, Christianity and Islam. Now, I know not all followers of these faiths believe that, but some do. I’m not familiar enough with the holy books of either faith to know whether the written teachings support this stance, but I imagine there are some passages to support this idea, and others to discredit it, which seems to be true of religions on many issues. Though I don’t profess to know the mind of God, I can’t imagine a loving God would make us bet on our eternal afterlives without the information to make the right choice. As such, I find myself dismissive of the idea that one must choose the right religion to get into Heaven and avoid Hell.

Of course, that doesn’t mean I haven’t questioned my beliefs many times. I even recently found myself wondering if I was on the wrong path, and if I should choose a specific faith. After all, I don’t know what God truly expects, because I’ve never received a response from him on this issue with which I could definitively determine what I should do. Any response, assuming it is a response and not just me making one up, has been feelings that I am on the right path, and need to keep questioning. Just having a feeling about a belief that could turn out to be so important isn’t always comforting though. To resolve the issue, at least for a time, I decided to pray directly, something I don’t do often since God would know what I’m thinking anyway. I just laid out my concerns, and made clear I’m doing my best to find the right way, and left it at that. Of course, I’ve also questioned about whether or not any God exists, and if there might be more than one. I can’t think of any solid reason either alternative isn’t just as viable, but my current feeling still points me to one God, so that’s what I’m working with for now. There isn’t much else to do, except keep searching.

In terms of moral behavior, my beliefs align much closer to Wiccan and common secular thinking: so long as I’m not harming anyone by my behavior, it’s ok to go forward with it. Harm in this sense can be physical, emotional, mental, spiritual, or any other category I may have missed. The idea is there is freedom to do what you want, so long as you don’t deny anyone else their freedom to do as they wish and be safe. Naturally, it gets more complicated than that, but as a basic outline, I think it works pretty well.

I also think that religion has to make room for science. Religion and spirituality are about trying to explain what we don’t know and can’t prove. If it turns out we can show something to be true or likely to be true scientifically, then generally speaking, religion ought to be revised to make room for this knowledge. I’m not claiming science is always right, but it has done a lot of good for us, and the body of knowledge we have aquired from science has been very reliable for us in it’s use. Religious knowledge has been quite a bit more hit and miss. I definitely think there is religious and spiritual truth to be found, just that we won’t find it all in one place, and we won’t find it if we don’t acknowledge other truths found in our world.

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Religion, Spirituality

Human Automation

Apr 11th, 09 / 0 Comments

I was musing to myself at work a few days ago. I realized that much of the time I’m working, the job I do requires absolutely no thinking. When it gets busy, I need to think how to prioritize tasks, but that’s it. Aside from that bit of thinking, the work I do most days can all be done on autopilot.

Now, certainly, this leaves lots of time for thinking, which is useful to have. I don’t seem to have enough of that these days. But then again, it also gives me the feeling of being a human cog in a machine to get a job done. I’ve felt this way about having a job for a long time, though I’m attempting to find a way of dealing with that problem. One way I’m doing this is to find a new job that feels a bit more meaningful. The other is by working on my websites, attempting to build them up to the point that I don’t need a job in the first place. I love writing, and fiddling with technical stuff, so it’s lots of fun to do this.

That’s a little off topic though. The point is, this feeling about being a cog in a machine is a fairly common feeling among the employed, though it’s by no means universal. Some people have their dream jobs, and they’ll never have cause to feel this way. Some people are being cogs, and just haven’t woken up to that yet. And some are in my position, aware, but not sure how to fix it, other than look for a new way that will help meet their needs. How did we get to this point though?

The truth is, we’ve always needed to do some work. Everything living needs to do some work in order to live. We need food and shelter from the elements simply to survive, so the work to obtain that is the minimum needed. Procreation also requires work (though we can probably classify some aspects of that as fun), and that is also required if we’ll live on as a species. Beyond that, we don’t need anything else.

These days, we do a lot more work, because we look to have a lot more stuff. Some of this stuff is really cool, and serves a useful or entertaining pupose. Some of it is neither cool, useful, or entertaining. We need to manufacture it somehow, and while machines can do some of that work, people need to do the rest. This means we need fewer people to provide all the food, so other people can provide all the toys. This makes more work for everyone, since we provide for ourselves and a bunch of other people. Someday, perhaps machinery will take over doing any work necessary for our survival, but that may come with it’s own problems, such as deciding on distribution of goods, and how to deal with the machinery breaking down.

Either way, we need a way to break free of the machine, and that’s where finding a job you love or getting your own business started comes in. It’s not foolproof, and obviously I’m still working on getting any one of those to work out for me. You can also look for ways to live minimally in order to work less as well, leaving you with more time to pursue living life.

It feels absolutely crazy to spend so much of life just working, and not living. We go to school for six hours a day for 13 years, do at least an hour a night of homework for four of them, then work eight hours a day for another 45 years. Some tack on four or  more extra years of schooling to that as well. Where does it end? When do we get to live? Do we not get to enjoy our youth without worrying about how to pay the bills?

I’m not taking that path. I know it’s possible to do otherwise, and I’m going to do everyhing I can to work less and play more while meeting my needs and those of any family I may need to support along the way. I haven’t found the solution that works for me yet, but I’ll get there. Perhaps this very site will be it, perhaps it won’t. I don’t know yet. But I’m not doing a 40, 50, 60 hour workweek for the next 40 years, unless I find something I can really enjoy for that time, and that allows good vacation time.

The one thing I’ve learned is there are a lot of strategies out there, and some work for some people better than for others. You really do need find your own way if you want it to work. That doesn’t mean there won’t be useful tools and learning experiences to be gained from others. For instance, the blogging software I use is created and maintained by WordPress, and the inspiration to try blogging came from 10 Reasons You Should Never Get a Job. But I’m finding out how to make this all work for me, and I may come to find out I need another strategy if this doesn’t work out in the end. My original site, Gaming My Way, was my first foray into blogging, and also a manifestation of my childhood dream to work with video games in some way. It’s been going for a year now, and I still work on it sometimes, but I’m also still experimenting with other ideas for now.

In any case, I’m not going to be a robot at my job forever. I will move on, and I will find the time to live my life, and not just work it all away.

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Independence and Freedom, Jobs