I am not afraid of dying - but I am saddended at the thought of not knowing.

The same old dance.

I was visiting an online christian group on facebook tonight and was unsuprised to find new names dancing the same old dance. Same arguments, same tactics, same results. There is nothing new under the sun, as they say. More and more I am coming to terms with what is becoming obvious to me - we are animals of instinct and predictable behaviour. We act according to our species defined nature. I see it in people, in children and animals especially. I am finding it difficult to see an intrinsic meaning in this life, especially to the human species. What we are, what we say, and what we do is in so many ways meaningless beyond the temporal present experience. The dance has no real life - it is a tired recording and replaying of a song losing its vitality. We speak, we laugh, we cry, we fear, we have courage - in repeatable and predicatable patterns. We are beasts - we are dancing bears. We are chasing the big top: chasing a show that is patently meaningless and missing the simple pleasure of simply surviving and existing.

Selfishness rethought.

I was thinking a little bit whilst brushing my teeth.....is selfishness not natural and self-preserving? Perhaps it is not selfishness itself that is wrong, but uninformed selfishness - not fully understanding and/or manipulating all of the data for the best fulfillment of self-centered desires. I think that an argument for selfishness supported by selflessness could be made. Sometimes, perhaps most of the time, the best way to care for oneself is to care for others. I am willing to go so far as to theorize that there is nothing we do that is not done without a core of selfishness driving it. We help others because it makes US feel good, for example. No, I think selfishness is indeed at the heart of survival and that it may not be as devilish as we tend to think. It is when we act in our own self interest without understanding the situation, the nature of our needs and wants, and the cause and effect of our actions that gives selfishness such a bad rap.