There’s nothing easy in championing reason

It was progress enough when we managed to at least resist deluding ourselves, beguiling ourselves with lies and fantasies,

Perhaps big part of it was just laughable unattractiveness of religion, as compared to actual progress of human ingenuity. Even if you yourself were useless — it was still in your self-interest to cultivate real progress, over fantasies and fairy tales. It was a simple choice. Go to church, or go shopping

And out of respect for that true progress — you also learned to keep your mouth shut a little bit more.

 

Being humble is not a function of knowing little — it’s a function of knowing a lot. The greatest fools have least notion of how little they know.

So you weren’t humble and quiet because you were so capable, and you weren’t arrogant and stubborn because you knew so little

You were humble and you shut your mouth, because we were doing SO FUCKING WELL, that you wouldn’t want to risk it, by saying anything stupid, and being excluded from all this ABUNDANCE

 

…until we had seen too much abundance

You think the poor were kicked into the dirt. You say “inequality”

No, the poor were lifted out of incomparably greater poverty. I say TRUE progress

And when you’re no longer in the dirt — you can have your EGO again

And you are free to be stupid again

And you can have RELIGION

again

 

It can be an old one or a new one

Of course you’ll cherry-pick it if you can

The only point is that you BELIEVE in something

And that something is INFALLIBLE

So that you can BELIEVE IN IT FOREVER,

But for it to be infallible — it must of course also be, almost certainly, false

Because for fallible man to unravel infallible truths is not exactly common

But you still want those truths, even if they aren’t really true at all

You want how it feels to be more certain of something

Again, you want to believe in something

Doesn’t matter if it’s a morbid corpse on a cross, flying saucer, illuminati, the utter failure of the west, communism, fascism, the BIG LIE, nationalism, progressivism which doesn’t bring any progress, COSMIC ENERGY… you name it

 

And I don’t even blame you

Name one meaningful civilisation which lasted without religion

(Confucianism and Buddhism come to mind as only exceptions, but both not without some ritualistic elements and fideistic elements)

This shit is EXTREMELY powerful

It’s opium indeed, religion is opium of the masses indeed

 

…BUT we did outgrow it, as a civilisation, did we not

We finally did

But I’m seeing we’re reverting, devolving

Into new makeshift, pagan religions

Religions of state

INTERNET-ly MEMETIC RELIGIONS

And even the old ones, with maybe some dumb twist

 

For there’s nothing easy in championing reason

It’s the unending doubt

For there to be light there must be darkness

Reason is the flickering light in the darkness of unknown

Religion is blindness, it knows neither light nor darkness, only numbness

Reason is unending doubt

Reason is unending work

And reason is the eventual dissolution of itself, dissolution of reason, and your neurons slowly die and then die entirely

And reason is remaining cognizant of the process, of the process of it’s own demise

Religion, whether it’s your Jesus Christie or social justice mythology (unlike true societal progress) — has no self-awareness, no perception of anything, no self-correction, no reality really

It of course doesn’t serve any function related to reality, not primarily. All it’s function is downstream from the need to BELIEVE in something, and that BELIEF SO HAPPENS to contribute to social cohesion, if it’s decently formulated

But it’s NOT reason, NOT reality

 

Why am I writing this?

This of course it not another boring anti-religion tirade

Most those anti-religion folks are now more religious than those their condemned

For again, let me repeat — it’s the DESIRE TO BELIEVE IN SOMETHING, irrespective of it’s TRUTH value — which I call religion

And without Jesus — it has only gotten worse

At least we kept our Jesus mostly in church and at home, and away from social media, from politics, from academia, from hollywood,

And away from what we considered “SECULAR”, aside from morality, the practical matters were dealt with practically, and not with faith in Allah

But now you’ll be tying your shoelaces, mulling over the “vibration” of those shoes, or perhaps which evil billionaire oligarch’s pocket you enlarged in wearing those shoes

 

Ah we’re not ready to quit religion

The more we quit it — the stronger we pulled back to it

To modern pagan religions in every shape and form

 

Only reality can save you

There is no magic bullet. THE VERY NOTION OF MAGIC BULLET is what leads us back to religion

Only reality can save you

Actually doing something useful can save you

Actually doing something lovely can save you

Actually believing in useful and lovely can supersede believing in fairy tales and political revolutions

And then perhaps actually believing in your own fallibility and frailty and IMPEDING DEMISE — and actually accepting it — would for a change be believing in something that’s true, by every verifiable metric

But you know the last part

That’s the final, and first reason, why you crave religion

Crave truth and reason instead

And beauty