I’ve been meaning to write to you for some time now, but the internet connection at Richard’s place hasn’t been sorted out yet so it’s been a hassle getting things online, but we’re working on getting that done.
I’ve had a few thoughts in the meantime, and a whole bunch of things I really cannot understand.
Remember the time you told me that places like Africa and Cambodia and other destitute countries were destitute because these places as a whole did not value life; I think it’s our fault that they are the way they are. The Christian countries, The States, Britain, the rest of Western Europe are the ones that have caused them their plight. We have ruined the environment for them and sent them diseases and imposed our urban population patterns on them. We’ve introduced Western materialism to these places… and I may be wrong, but the lust for a sort of bourgeoisie lifestyle must have affected the power structure of the respective governments. It doesn’t matter, but I am convinced the Christian world has certainly ruined these places, and they do not value life any less than we do.
Sometimes I really do believe we have a God that does things for his own amusement. He’s not capricious just like how we aren’t capricious about certain things; but just as we can be very certain about the important things like family /job /academic responsibilities, we can be capricious towards things and people that do not really matter. I’ll come to church every Sunday as best I can even if I didn’t promise it, but I’ll just as well forget to make a call to someone I said I would.
I cannot understand your aversion towards nudity and images of people having sex (remember the magazine I had you asked me to throw away because it had pictures of animals and people fucking). I do not see what’s wrong with it, and cannot understand how a perfectly intelligent and relatively liberal individual like your self can think it is wrong or disturbing. I do not understand how something people do themselves can offend them. I cannot understand how a naked pair of breasts in public can offend people when they see it all the time in private. It is what happens, and I will acknowledge the need to behave accordingly under the right circumstances because society is affected by it and we should not disrupt the way it is used to functioning unnecessarily, but there is nothing to be offended about. There is nothing dangerous about images of people having sex. We all will end up doing it someday. It’s a fact of life, why should we be ashamed of it? And what is wrong if it is erotic?
The ten commandments really is a set of laws that demand the opposite action of what is natural and human. In my opinion, sin isn’t the evil thing that people have made it out to be and it only exist because the law exists. The whole point is for us to realize that we will never achieve the supernatural by being human, and therefore need Christ (or months of meditation, or Allah or hash) We need something that will liberate us from our human state because the supernatural is a better state/ realm to be in. I don’t get it anymore, is God really a loving God? In the seven deadly sins, wrath is mentioned, and yet that is something that is also part of our God.
I doubt sin as we know it is present because of free choice, and there needs to be evil so that we can choose good. If we are made in the image of God than we are a perfect reflection of him, only less real and less pure and less perfect. And the fault in perfection isn’t the addition of our capacity to feel anger or lust of any of those things, the fault in perfection is that we are less able to feel these things, and less able to act on them. We are capable of murder, and so is God. We are capable of feeling anger, and so is God.
This is one of the things that really struck a chord in me when I watched Sin City. The characters were all doing the same things, only we knew distinctly which ones were extremely noble and which ones weren’t. Although really, they were the same.
I do not understand why you think school is very important either. It is a good place to be in to make friends and to while away time as we grow up and ready ourselves for the harsher world out there, but it doesn’t really teach you anything. All learning is up to the individual, you must already know that, and that’s why I can’t understand why you think it is so important that Tori go to school always. Of course she should go as often as she can, but when a better opportunity arises, I don’t think she should be denied it just because of a couple of classes.
God has many opportunities, but if I had sat on my ass and done nothing, then I wouldn’t have had written for the local paper, no one would have noticed the things I was putting so much effort into. It’s easier to find a job if you have a job, the more you snatch up the good things that come your way, the more they will come. God acknowledges appreciation I’m sure.
The way you put it, it’s almost as if you believe this part of our lives shouldn’t really exist. It shouldn’t really be for living. It is for preparing us to enter the world outside when we turn into adults. But it IS part of our lives, we still have to live it, and if life is a present to each and every human being, than it is not right that we make the most of it as we know best. And you think you know better, and I cannot deny that you do know better –things like making me play the piano when I was younger- but sometimes we know just as well, or even more-so. I mean, I have learnt so much travelling around South East Asia. There was nothing to regret, although you said there would be. There was nothing to regret about having sex with my first boyfriend, there was nothing to regret about the people I’ve dated in between him and R. I still do not regret the blog –in fact, it has given me more good opportunities than bad rep. And what do I care about the silly relatives and acquaintances that do not even really care about me anyway? The people that matter and the ones with any brains at all see that it is those people that are silly and haven’t thought about much about anything.
I cannot bear it. What if the world ended tomorrow, than would it have been better for Tori and myself and in fact all of us to have lived our lives like the future didn’t really matter as much as our present happiness, and that all that we do now in preparation for the future has also got to make us satisfied now. Because one year as a child is as long as one year as an adult, it is still part of our lives.
At any rate, I wish you would be more discerning. The people that run the school are sillier and more daft then we are. They are stuck in this mad academic world that has no relevance whatsoever to the reality of things, which is fine for those that are in that reality, but not fine of the rest of us that aren’t. People do not get any smarter or wiser or more creative with time and age, and you must know that, although you don’t seem to believe it, and I really cannot understand that. Anyway, I wish that you would see the situation for what it is, and that Tori should be allowed to pursue what she wishes to do. She’s never going to be any good as a doctor or a lawyer or one of those professions, but she’s a class theatre act… I’ve never seen anything like it, and the people at the company haven’t either. And when you turn on the television, you don’t see anything like it either. She’s completely amazing, and the more you let her do what she loves and less of what she doesn’t (and of course grades don’t really matter when you want to do what she wants to do) then the more fulfilling her life will be.
I have known too many people that lead the straightest lives, and have kids and have a boring job, and they are always envious of the people that have been able to do what they have always wanted. But of course those people will never have made it… they don’t have the guts or the determination, That’s what most degrees are for. They are for people with not the guts to do what they really want to do. Of course I exclude people that do what they do because they really believe in say helping the sick or expanding the horizons of science… such and such. But most people do degrees because they are easy. It is much harder to do it your own way, and do it well. I suppose a lot of people who went the ‘I did it my way’ way failed because they didn’t have the determination… but those that did, and had the stamina and the drive to stick to it made it eventually. And they were all the better for it.
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