What Will Be

Things were once so simple. You were kind to others and to the earth, and that was that. Native America and isolated Asia shared a similar belief despite being so separate from each other: pantheism. They believed in greater spirits rather than in gods - the concept of henotheism, roughly. Then the takeover of Christianity swept over everything, while at the same time, and even before God, Paganism and Agnosticism began, and finally Atheism. This evolution of religion truly strikes me as rather typical, really following the saying, "History repeats itself." It also reminds me of Neitzsche's overall message: start with nothing, and you end with nothing. I do not necessarily mean to infer that what we have is nothing, that is why I consider myself agnostic - I consistently do not know, and would rather be honest with what I feel, rather than to follow something that will never be verified.

It is due to my nurturing that I be as honest as is possible to attain, and the controversy of religious matters is no exception. I still struggle with it at times, and I take it all in, considering whatever I can. But truthfully, I do not feel that religion is "the" answer. If it were the answer, how now has it ironically brought so much destruction while it preaches something else much more altruistic? Anyone can "reason" out why certain pain and horror happens, but why insist on that? Why must we know the ways of the universe? I suppose it is a great feature of the human species: curiosity and knowledge for greater things outside of ourselves. But for me, it is simply another kind of government and therapy; to keep one sane within this never ending mystery that is life. Religion is a metaphysical thing that has been with us for so long that it is like a drug; we need it to keep the structure, as we continue to detain ourselves with technology and rules and xenophobia. We just don't know what we want that we want everything. It is false to me, a false faith.

I think this is what history classes do not do enough of, and that is really explaining the mentality in which people lived with during the makings of history, and why all these things occurred. Instead, you get a list of events on a timeline with the ever recurring theme of "fear." Kids laugh at death and at torture, truly oblivious to what suffering is. I wonder, sometimes, just where it is we're going; as humans, what will we be in another 30 years? Yes, there is global warming and the constant fighting within the hundreds of subcultures, but what will be mentally? Emotionally?

http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/pto-20071228-000003.xml