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MEANDERINGS

Hedonism has diminishing returns.

Without hope. I navel-gaze at my first world problems still wanting to belong.

Where once there was God, now we have an appreciation that we are alone and all we've got is one another. But at least we have each other, and by this bond perhaps we might find God in family?

The face in the woodblocks I found in the weathered grain of an old fence paling. I removed the excess wood; printed the face on paper; and then played with the image.

Today we must make our own hope.

For millennia we manufactured faith in gods, if only we invested the same in each other, but it's not in our nature.

Where once there was God, now we have an appreciation that we are alone and all we've got is one another. But we also know there is no bond or brotherhood replacement for God.

We can only find god anew in academics discussion of what we would like humanity to become. But in this there is no magic, not saving of our souls. Beyond perhaps a digital copy. But no magic.

at least we have each other, and by this bond can we perhaps find God anew?

Rather than an entity, should God instead be an ongoing discussion, a symbol of what we aim to emulate: A loving God?

Is the desire to believe in God, a misplaced primal instinct to survive by belonging to a tribe stronger than oneself?

Are guilt, empathy and loyalty, reciprocal behaviours that evolved to help us belong to a tribe? Are the needs for purpose, love, connection, fulfillment and importance, part of the same need to belong?

After millennias of believing in gods, in a short space of time, developed countries are increasingly discarding belief in gods. Are their flow-on impacts to wellbeing?

At least when we believed in god, I had hope. Now there is no hope. But sometimes I sense the magic in those that still believe.

I've long sought to make sense of life through rationalism but followed to its logical conclusion, rationalism leaves little room for hope. Rationalism at the expense of faith led to feelings of hopelessness, and so I yearn for something more. I yearn for a hope that cannot be reasoned. I yearn for magic.

Today we need to make our own hope. Where is the star to guide us today?

Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, was it about the Star of Bethlehem?

Is the desire to believe in God a misplaced social instinct to belong to a tribe stronger than oneself?

Is the prevalence of religion due to the reproductive advantage of community and pro-life doctrine favoring these gene characteristics?

Life is somewhat like a Faustian bargain: Against probability we are born, we live and then our lives are taken. Hell being the state without God.

Nihilism: The rejection of all religious and moral principles, in the belief that life is meaningless.

Hedonism: The pursuit of pleasure and self indulgence as the highest aim in life.

Anhedonia: Inability to feel pleasure in normally pleasurable activities.

Religion: Beliefs and culture that shield individuals from the meaninglessness of life.

Out there on the edge, on the precipice of oblivion, beyond the realm of life's snow dome, I watch the trinket dangle, the sun god holds our blue bauble and the fate that waits. A carrot to the donkey from the playful puppeteer. At the end of my discourse, I died but did not know it...