Question for you, my f'list ...

Here's the situation. It's tomorrow. Atheism wins its case through compelling evidence. Churches concede the non-existence of God, and that they've been wasting everybody's time all along. The word goes out - not "God is dead," but "We've been making it up all along, or at worst going along with the charade out of peer pressure. God is no more real than unicorns, Mork from Ork or Superman."

Now, who determines what you do with your existence knowing that when it's over, there's no Heaven waiting for you, no Hell, and not even an endless cycle of reincarnation so you can correct where you've fucked up in this life, meaning that you have to correct your screwups now, while you still live?

What if you come to realise, inside yourself, that nobody Up There is watching - that, in fact, there is no Up There in the first place? What do you do?

Where, and in what endeavour, would you personally now find solace and meaning in your life?

Now bear in mind that some of us are already living this situation and accept the above premises as truth based on all the evidence all around us. So this sort of realisation really wouldn't turn my life, or the lives of some of us on my f'list, upside down at all.

I personally really do not believe in the afterlife as described by Mother Church, or in the Christian God. I was born here, on Spaceship Earth, and like every other human being with few exceptions I am never going to visit any other planet but this tiny blue ball of rock and gas and water outside of my imagination, much to my great chagrin.

But if it turned out that this above view, this viewpoint which may be heretical, anathema to you, not only receives official acknowledgment by the authorities - but reaches within you and grabs you by the heart and soul, makes you realise its truth for yourself despite your personal wish that It Ain't So?

Where would you find the meaning in your lives then?

Writer's Block: Your Favorite Series: One Last Go Round

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Nothing.

The days of passive entertainment, where everyone just sits down and gets shown what other people have made for them, are - or should be - an anomaly in human history.

People long past made up their own stories, sang and played music that is now long forgotten but was once the vogue across the known world; made jokes now left unheard; enacted plays and dramas and left nothing behind, not even footprints in the sand in an amphitheatre. Only fragments of past human creativity survive, but they carry an enduring imagery and concepts which resound in the tropes of modern entertainment to this day.

Heroes still have their flaws, their loved ones and their enemies; conflict is conflict, torment is torment, and the rewards of heroism and virtue are the same wherever you look - but the Ancients didn't have to invent the format, as much as embellish what they were seeing played out on the streets of their fledgling civilisations.

I would really, really hate for the only cultural artifacts of this era that survive for future archaeologists to uncover to be ring pulls, plastic bags, Magic: the Gathering cards and DVDs of Buffy, Smallville, Supernatural and Hex.

Culturally, we have done better in the past. Why aren't we producing Walt Whitmans and Lord Byrons now? Where are the modern Shelleys and Ambrose Bierces? Instead, we've got J K Rowling, writing all her shit for a mass audience, ticking all the boxes without looking at what those boxes are.

So I'll say it again. Nothing. We can do better. Much better.

Today ...

I faced disappointment today. However, I managed to look past that and focus on the near future, which I hope won't be so disappointing.

I went to see The Dark Knight this afternoon at the cinema. Trouble was, the movie started just about ten minutes before I got there ... and the next showing wasn't due until 17:00, just a little over three hours hence.

Not only that, it poured heavily the whole time I was walking to and from the cinema.

Nonetheless, I feel somewhat chuffed, because I live on one side of town, and the cinema lies on the diametric opposite end of town.

And I walked all the way there, and all the way back.

Very, very chuffed.

Stakeout FAIL

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