BACKGROUND AND EARLY YEARS
(Written in Oct 1998 - Revised in Dec 2001)
The first years of my life were spent in a small hamlet called Tuktoyaktuk, on the shores of the Arctic Ocean. Due to the earliest years of one's life being the most impressionable, I believe experiencing the Canadian frontier, with its abundant naturalism, had a signficant impact on the development of my early character. An impact I have carried throughout my life but would not consciously define until my mid twenties. That is, in the absence of religious instruction during youth, the elements and animals of the Canadian arctic molded me in their image.
I have many colorful childhood memories of the Inuit (Eskimos) and this period of time: beluga whale hunts, eating muktuk on the beaches, devouring raw fish, my German Shepherd Keno, my friend "Old Man", swimming with jellyfish in the summer months, building vast snow-ice tunnels in the winter, ice fishing, snoozing in dog sleds, being snow blind, ogling Inuit girls, and more. During these years, in summertime, I would also visit my mother in the town of Hay River, south of the Great Slave Lake.
Come age eight I moved with my father, step-mother and sister into southern environs, the towns and cities of Evansburg, Calgary and Drayton Valley. Here I was educated to the world beyond the Northwest Territories, Alberta, Canada, and North America.
If I had to give a reason as to why I picked up the pen in my late teens I would say it had to do with an unconscious -- but ever-growing conscious -- desire to make sense of existence and my place in it. Conflicting values and visions, world history, the Cold War armaments race, irrational desires and pursuits amidst friends and family -- both micro and macroscopically there were so many questions to be answered. Without such questions answered in an appropriate and formal manner I felt I would never be able to grasp the world properly and make critical decisions determining the direction of my life.
Due to its popularity, both locally and globally, it was inevitable I would first meet and come to terms with the concepts of religion in the endeavor to rationalize the world around me.
EARLY INFLUENCES AND JOURNAL NOTES
From youth to my first journal entry on January 29, 1989 I was never passionately eager to embrace a religion or to believe in a God. For the most part the tone of these early writings was one of question and not conclusion, though I was more anti-religion in 1989 than I would be from 1991 to 1994. With an uneasy gut-wrenching feeling when it came to any religion, the earliest literary influence that expanded on this feeling would be Friedrich Nietzsche, the German philosopher (1844-1900).
Nietzsche's Ecce Homo would be my introduction to philosophy, a book I purchased on July 3, 1990. His position and confidence on many matters would burn their way into my mind. Though I did not understand a lot of what he wrote for years to follow, his piercing criticisms of religion and 'altruistic morality' would be central to the development of my ideas.
In the summer of 1990, while I lacked the conscious intellectual foundations of individualism, I was feeling individualism. For the first time in many years the universe had a sense of opening up, welcoming me into existence to be an individual player.
Now consciously striving for objective truth and under a new influence, I made the decision to begin studying the Hebrew-Greek scriptures, the so-called "Old" and "New" testaments of the most popular regional variety of religion, Christianity.
The new influence I mention was my first exposure to a romantic relationship. Though this relationship was not to continue beyond early 1992 it intensified my appetite for a tangible, concrete truth. Not being able to understand others, determined to break through my own ignorance, I purposely withdrew into solitaire and began conducting self-experiments. What better place to be alone -- to think, study and script a plan of action -- than in the midst of a few billion people.
PAPERS I & II
It was probably the early journeys as a youth between parents and family which set my traveling legs in comfortable motion. For at the age of twenty three, after two restless years of university, after fourteen months in the remote isolation of Norman Wells (Northwest Territories), I left North America and headed for parts unknown. I didn't know where I would go. I just stepped on a plane with a one way ticket to London, England (December 25, 1993) ... and kept on going until I resurfaced twenty two months later in Hong Kong (October 7, 1995).
A first attempt at summarizing my ideas and constructing a philosophy framework came in the fall of 1993, only a few months before a North American departure. I took notes out of thirty seven journals and called the compilation Paper I.
With Christianity being my first exposure to a systematic world-view Paper I was predominantly Christian in tone. However, as the title page to Paper I reads, a break with Christianity was already manifesting itself as I curiously looked to other world religions and, to a lesser degree, secular philosophies.
A year later, the majority of time spent in Islamic states studying the Qur'an, Paper II was started. It began on a bus to Lahore, Pakistan, in outline form. For the next six months while self-exiled in a Hindu ashram (yoga/meditation) I wrote the beginnings of Paper II while furiously studying many differing kinds of thought.
Inspired by an incredible period of synthesis, ... papers, notes, books, and pens scattered about on all surfaces ... the insights of December 1994 and January 1995 were, for me, the beginnings of an intellectual revolution.
RELIGION'S CONDEMNATION OF MAN
BODY & SOUL
One of the more constructive elements that came out of seven years of religious study would be finding the ancient Jewish concept of man (Nephesh ). In essence, the body is the soul -- that is, the body is a mortal soul -- in contrast to the ever more popular body and soul duality (the immortal soul ) of world religion.
Based on this distinction alone it is of little wonder to me why Nietzsche applauded and celebrated the Jewish scriptures, harshly criticizing Christian scripture for its "other-worldliness". Moreover, his disgust the Christians had the audacity to combine the two books into one, as the "Bible", and consider it "the book par excellence".
The simplest way I can put it: the concept of an immortal soul devalues the human body. By comparison the immortal soul is considered "pure" and "undefiled" while the mortal body is thought of as a "gross material product" and "sinful". From Hinduism to Buddhism to Islam to Christianity, human flesh is always to be a source of pain and suffering, imperfection, foulness, temptation, and evil.
Once an individual accepts the idea of an immortal soul and an afterlife no longer is the human individual thought of as an end in himself/herself, but as a means -- even a barrier -- to some other existence, some other world, some other life. A statement by the Hindu Gandhi, a man many people associate with the concepts of non-violence and peace, reveals an intense dislike for the human body: "the body is a prison of the soul, only a prison." The idea here is that man's body is the cause of all suffering and affliction, and until his immortal soul can break free of this prison-like mortal body, the true potential of his immortal soul will never be reached.
As no objective evidence has been discovered to conclusively prove the existence of an afterlife, it is irrational to downplay the importance of one's mortal body and the many happinesses open to us in the only life we know conclusively to exist, a human life on earth.
Additionally, the devalution I write about here is found in a 'New Testament' passage expressing similar meaning: "No one can slave for two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will stick to the one and despise the other." (Matthew 6:24 partial). Thus when a religious individual speaks highly of their immortal soul it can be assumed they love this immortal soul more than their mortal body. In their value system the human body is second-place (at best).
I have met many religious individuals who speak of 'peace on earth' in the name of their chosen prophet, but in the same breath the ideas they speak reveal how much they hate humanity. This is a contradictory position to say the least. One does not establish peaceful, friendly and productive human relations by telling people how much they are despised as human beings.
The same goes for the earth itself. Many religious individuals highly value their concept of heaven (or afterlife). Naturally the earth is of secondary importance. In this light how are human beings supposed to better themselves when their human bodies and the earth we reside on is never their greatest priority and first love? The answer is obvious: they don't. Or if they do better themselves it is done with a moderate enthusiasm. And that is why, until many individuals choose a more rational value system, they will continue to suffer needlessly.
I am asked: "What about the impoverished and starving of the world? What happiness or hope is there for them then, if their earthly misery is all they will ever see and experience?" My answer to this question is simple: stop believing in the ideas that impoverish mankind and strip away human dignity.
Stop running to religion as the cure for human suffering. The ideas and practices of religion are a fundamental cause of this suffering. A cure for the ills of the poor, of course, will not come instantaneously. Choosing reason and a secularized value system bring no miracles. The place to start a change for the better comes with an education in human and earth-orientated values -- patiently learned, practiced and applied over time.
ALTRUISM
"If I knew for certain that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life ..."
Most the philosophies in the world state it is the "higher end" of a man to devote his life to the selfless service of other beings. Here is a list of the world's philosophies stating service -- be it to a God, a family, a stranger, society, or the state -- should be, ideally and practically, a priority and duty. To not do so, to live for one's self, is a violation of the philosophy and thus an immoral and/or criminal act.
Hinduism
Islam
Christianity
the Baha'i Faith
Zoroastrianism
Buddhism
Judaism
|
Sikhism
Confucianism
Jainism
Socialism
Fascism
Nazism
Communism
|
Against altruism both 'ideally' and 'practically' I think the most noble undertaking a man can strive for is to consciously know and live for himself. The well-being of the self comes first. Through the acknowledgment, respect and worship of the self do all things become possible. This path of individuality manifests character, confidence, courage, order and good relations. It results in a society of autonomous thinkers and creative leaders.
"The good man ought to be a lover of self, since he will then act nobly, and so both benefit himself and his fellows; but the bad man ought not to be a lover of self, since he will follow his base passions, and so injure himself and his neighbors." (Aristotle)
The altruistic mentality -- in which people are encouraged to 'ride free' on the backs of others -- manifests laziness, sloppiness, ignorance, and exploitation. It results in a society of shysters and slackers.
My dislike of altruism does not mean one should be barred from voluntarily helping other people. It means other individuals -- e.g., your best friend and/or a complete stranger -- should not have the right to your life, your time, your energy, your property and resources, for their own benefit and personal use.
In other words, I advocate the moral -- and thus legal -- right to one's own life. If one voluntarily decides to help others, that is acceptable. It is the immoral involuntary clause that every altruistic philosophy, every religious organization, every socialist "humane program", every dictator, wants to force on others I am opposed to.
Be it an excommunication, imprisonment or a death sentence -- when it comes to history a sincere study can clarify the self-denying, irrational and bloody nature of religion and the secular versions of altruism.
Individual freedom is not to be sacrificed "for the greater good" -- this is the lesson taught to us by the twentieth century. The slaughterhouses of socialism, communism and fascism -- all variants of the altruistic creed -- have murdered tens of millions of people in extermination campaigns and famines, dragged the free world into two destructive world wars, and succeeded in making their citizens of equal status, in poverty and bankruptcy.
In this same time, the civilians of a free and individual orientated society have raised human prosperity and dignity to unprecedented levels in world history … and continue to soar higher.
GOD