I Will Not Die

The other day I talked about the advantages of having an open worldview, a worldview that wasn’t restricted to a worldview. While I didn’t name it as such, that kind of worldview is a sort of non-worldview, or an anti-worldview. It is non- and it is anti-, not because it isn’t a kind of worldview in an objective sense (as in the simple answer to the question, “How does one view the world?”), but rather, it is non- and it is anti- because it is unlike most of the worldviews that are practiced. In other words, it non- and it is anti- in a historical sense (as in the answer to the question, “How have people viewed their world?”).

In short, my worldview is a worldview because it’s a way of defining how I view the world, but it’s not a worldview because it differs from all the other worldviews–if when we think of worldviews, we have all the historical worldviews in mind, this isn’t one of those.

One last thing before I get started. In that other post, after the ensuing discussion in the comment thread, I now have the impression that I could have alienated some readers that I essentially debated with, readers that are my friends. I hope I did not. It turns out that what I said about science didn’t corroborate with everyone’s worldview. Just like that, this article and this worldview may not corroborate with everyone’s worldview. This brings to mind something I dislike about plenty of articles I read: the author presents a view, then asks the audience to swallow. My aim is somewhat different. I’ll still present a view, but I’m not asking anyone to swallow it. Just look at it. If anyone does decide to swallow, I hope it won’t be because I asked them to, but rather, because they saw something appetizing.

Incidentally, at work the other day, a coworker of mine told me about her religious views, and asked me about mine. When I told her I was an atheist, her eyes got narrow. I am an enemy. Another coworker quickly approached our conversation, suddenly very interested. He said, “Ah, so you’re an evolutionist.” I said, “Uh, sure.” He actually shook his head and sighed. The female coworker said a few things, most of which came out sounding absurd. First she said, “Well that makes sense, you’re smart.” Think how absurd that sounded to me. She, while indicting me for my atheism suggested that it made sense that I was, given that she perceived me as smart. The implication is that she might think dumb people are religious. I’m not sure if she knew what she was saying. She then said that her beliefs were based on faith, and that it made sense that I was not religious because I seemed like someone who needed to know the whys and the hows, that I needed to see and to touch those things that I am going to believe in. To me, again, this sounded absurd. Sure, I like to utilize the things I see in my mirrors, and what I see in front of me, and what I hear while I drive my car. To drive my car on faith would result in my getting into an accident. The male coworker said that I shouldn’t believe in evolution because it’s not something that can be replicated in a lab. Eh? But creationism can be? Again, I’m not sure if we knew what he was implying.

So what’s my point? Their worldview involves hostility for dissimilar worldviews. My worldview maintains abundant tolerance of other worldviews because I understand and accept the origins of those worldviews. I know what Christianity is (and monotheism generally, and religion generally), where it came from, how it’s a part of human history and I know most people are born right into it, instead of choosing it as an objective choice at some point later in life. Being intolerant of religion is as rational as getting upset because there are mountains on this earth, when in reality, mountains are just part of the terrain. But my biggest point is this: I don’t harbor negative feelings for religion itself, or religious people. I want to make that clear before I embark on the explanation of my worldview, a worldview where religion is wholly absent.

I’d like to hold up visibly and early on that above all else, I am a gentleman. You’ll soon see that it’s my worldview that demands it.

Let’s get started. Just about everyone in the West grows up in some kind of a religious setting. I certainly am no exception. My parents were Methodists. Their views were very conservative, even outside of political views. I was ingrained with the notion that there was another force in the universe, a watchful eye, an entity, a something. As I matured intellectually, I began scrutinizing those beliefs. I am naturally inquisitive. That inquisitiveness eventually outweighed the religious instructions not to inquire about the fundamental matters. I was taught that to be skeptical of God was to be sinful. But when you’re just dying to get into the pool in front of you, even when you’re told just how cold the water really is, it only takes a few dips with your toe before you start to have doubts about its purported temperature.

What did me in was my affection for the purity of logical answers. Mathematical correctness just always felt good, and so, after scrutinizing all the things that were taught to me about religion, and finding nothing logical about them, I started really gaining doubt. Once I started studying philosophy, I learned just how much the question of religion weighed on the minds of the great thinkers. They always persisted in the activity of seeking the truth. I admired that because in all religious questioning, somewhere along the line, you end with, “you just can’t know, you must just believe, you must have faith.”

But just saying what was not here didn’t complete my worldview. I wanted to know, besides what wasn’t here, what was here, I wanted to know how to comprehend the world, not just what not to comprehend. For that, the only fully digestible definition came from an interpretation of interpretation of Nietzsche. In this book, the author identifies Strauss as having identified Nietzsche’s identification of “the fundamental fact” that “Everything that is is the will to power.” Now because this blog isn’t a philosophy blog, and because I’m not sure I could serve the idea any good by delving into any details, I won’t go into the depths of it. However, I think enough can be used by the phrase in general that will allow you to grasp my worldview, so I’ll just use that phrase to illustrate what its implications are for my life and how I live.

I comprehend the world as “what you see is what you get”. But what is it that we see? What is it that we get? Everything is the will to power. Everything. What I ended up liking so much about this “ontology” was that it answers everything about everything. Suddenly there was no question that could not be answered. Everything is comprehensible. It explains why politics works, why athlete’s make so much money, why some people are rich and why others don’t have a pot to piss in, why lots of gifted people fail at everything, why lots of ungifted people succeed at everything, and a million more things that can sometimes seem inexplicable. There are no more phantoms. It’s not about political accidents, misguided idol worshipping, injustice of poverty and wealth and it’s not about being gifted or not. It’s just about the will to power. Winning an election is the will to power, becoming a basketball star is the will to power, having money is, and succeeding regardless of giftedness are all the will to power. There are no accidents, there is no luck in the sense of orchestrated fate or destiny.

A simplistic analogy could be imagining the world as a room filled with bouncing ping pong balls of different sizes going at different speeds. The world is a giant causal nexus. Everything in that world might be viewed as sometimes small, sometimes large, individual wills to power. Everything has a kind of mass, and a kind of velocity and they are exercising their will to a state of power.

What are the implications of a worldview like this? They are many. It means that in one sense, there is no rhyme, no reason. But, because there is no external rhyme or reason, suddenly it’s your rhyme, it’s your reason. The biggest gain from a worldview like this is that everything that is good in this world becomes your offspring. Everything is your own. Nothing is given to you. Take love, moral conduct, even life purpose. Love is not something external to you. It’s not something “out there,” it’s not something a god has given the Earth. The only way love can come to be, is if you yourself love. There is no moral standard or code in the universe that can reward you for good behavior. There is no karma. Your moral conduct is yours. Purpose in life? It’s whatever you want to make of it. There is no setting to which you should aspire to reach, only the setting to which you yourself decide you want to try to reach. This worldview places the entire responsibility of your life, your conduct, your actions and your attitudes squarely on your own two shoulders. You are the master of your days.

This worldview also answers all the questions about your life that you might have. If you wonder why you don’t seem to have the energy to get up and go, it’s because you have a low will to power. If you’re stagnant in life, feeling like you’re not going anywhere, it’s because you have a low will to power. However, there’s unbelievably good news that comes with this worldview. You can, to a limited degree, express a greater will to power. When you do decide to get up and really try to accomplish something, you’ll be doing it because you want to will more power. You won’t have to do it because piety dictates that you should, you won’t have to do it because you think you’ll get a reward handed to you by something external, the reward is yours. The reward will just be more power.

It also explains resentment and awe. We look up to those who have done great things because we see it as a power. However, lots of people resent those who have more will to power because the greater will to power in the other person shows their lesser will to power. Like I said, this is just some general, diluted things to think about (but I warned you once about this). If you want to delve into the idea in much better ways than I can do here, you can buy that book or start studying philosophy (or start a topic in the forum and we can discuss it endlessly).

In truth, I’ve been secretly sprinkling little pieces of this understanding throughout this blog, like here, and here, and here, and especially here, and others too, and interestingly, these have been, by a landslide, the least read articles written.

So that’s my worldview.

Dereck :: Aug.30.2008 :: Perspectives :: 14 Comments »

This is probably completely arrogant of me. It’s probably arrogant of me to think that an Internet celebrity of the highest caliber could have insinuated something even remotely related to something I, a microscopic blogger by comparison, wrote. When faced with odds like these, I did what I always do: a split second cost-benefit analysis.

1. I wrote something about a blogger that could have been perceived as inflammatory by that blogger.
2. The probability of that blogger actually noticing is somewhat small.
3. That blogger wrote something that could have been a veiled reaction to what I said.
4. The probability of that blogger taking the time to actually write a reaction to a microscopic blogger is, well, microscopic.
5. If he did write it with me in mind, and I chose to not notice, the moral consequences would be high. It would, through my silence, acknowledge the truth in the reaction.
6. If he did not write it with me in mind, and I chose to notice, then I would run the risk of sounding arrogant because I mistakenly thought he did.

So that’s the trade-off. If he did write a response, then I owe him an apology of the highest order. If what he wrote wasn’t a response to me, but was a piece designed for some wholly other purpose, and I still apologized, then I’m a doof because I think I’m important enough to be responded to by a man much better than I am. I chose to risk sounding arrogant. Not because I am, but because if I’m wrong, the need for an apology outweighs the consequences of me sounding like I’m important when I’m not.

None of this would be a problem if this blogger had outed me. However, neither I, nor what I wrote was mentioned. Instead, I found myself reading an article that, were it written for me, would have been sly, incredibly intelligent, and right to the point. It was perfectly tailored to me, without ever so much as mentioning me. It reminded me a lot of how I would have written it, if I were in that position. But like I said, it could be mere coincidence. I hope it is. But in the end, I’m a truth-seeker where justice comes first, even at the loss of my own dignity. To prove that, I’m going to dissect my dignity, spread it on the ground, then walk all over it, just in case.

Here goes.

On July 30th, I wrote an article The temporarily pissed at Seth Godin tribe - are you in THIS tribe?

It was a parody of a post by Seth Godin, found here.

I poked fun at the notion of having the barrier to entry to a club being the purchase of a book, all of which was outlined in a post where he said the object of the barrier to entry was not to sell more books. I did it by rewriting his article and modifying it to make it a polar opposite of his post, a new club, with no barrier to entry. Snarky, to be sure.

A couple of weeks later, I read this:

I don’t take advertising on this site. I never have, I don’t intend to.

If there’s a link on this site, it’s because I thought it was a good idea. I don’t get paid to include links. I write about stuff I like, stuff you might like and people that I like.

The only affiliate program I belong to is Amazon. All my proceeds go to charity.

I don’t take PR pitches. If you send me a press release, I will go out of my way not to mention you here.

I’m a principal shareholder in Squidoo.com, a company I founded. I don’t get paid a salary by Squidoo and all my Squidoo royalties go to charity.

I get paid to write books and give speeches. I don’t mention them on this blog because I want you to buy them, though, I mention them because I figure people who like the blog will find them interesting. Fine with me if you borrow a copy instead of buying one…

I don’t know if you can tell, but I’m trying hard to make this as pure an exercise as I can. I’m very fortunate to have your attention and (possibly) trust, and I’m certainly not going to blow it for a few bucks. But I’m not naive enough to believe that there are no conflicts. There are plenty of them. People and ideas that I have an irrational attachment to, or habits I’ve got that are hard to break. I’m hoping that won’t get in the way of provoking you to think a little differently.

There are plenty of bloggers and online writers who have far more significant conflicts of interest than I do. And that’s just fine. I have no issue with people selling ads or links or affiliate programs. I think, though, that it’s essential that you make it clear to people what those conflicts are. Most of the great bloggers I read do just that.

Thanks for reading.

Now like I said, this could just be a complete coincidence, but did you catch all the subtleties here? He wrote an article that I then parodied by essentially (albeit playfully) accusing him of having an ulterior motive, then two weeks later he writes a random post about how web sites (and not his) have ulterior motives. Remarkably coincidental. Do you think Seth Godin cares if web sites sell advertisements on their stupid sites? Of course not. Is he making a world-wide call for sites to have, like his, freedom from conflict by not praising a product that they happen to be selling? Of course not.

That article isn’t about other sites. It’s about his site. It’s about how his site is free of ulterior motives. Well who cares?

Well he just might if he found an article that accused him of having them…

If he did write that in response to my parody, he didn’t stoop to my level by naming me, as I named him. He didn’t say what he could have said loud and clear. So I will.

Here’s truth laid bare. I am a relatively new blogger who, among many aims, has the aim to build traffic so that I actually have an audience to whom I can write. I also monetize my blog in an effort to make money from the traffic I get. The more people that come to my blog, the more money I make. While making money is not my primary aim, writing articles about becoming the best possible human being we each can be is, but even so, because they both exist on the same pages, they cannot necessarily be separated. Many of the articles I write are written with the hope in mind that they will be widely read. Again, not necessarily for the money, but rather, because I hope they can make a difference for people.

As to the parody? It was gimmicky. I was hoping to capitalize on sentiment like this. And sure, it worked a little. Some people came, found other articles here they enjoyed and came back.

Now who had the ulterior motive?

I hope I’m wrong on this one, but if I’m not, I’m sorry Seth Godin.

Dereck :: Aug.28.2008 :: Blogosphere :: 7 Comments »

Exactly one minute ago, I was supposed to be leaving, alone, on a bicycle, heading off to tear through the wilderness of the Western United States of America in search of a new beginning. I was hoping to go and spread human kindness, generated from my own two legs, across the cities and towns that I came across. I was hoping to tell the entire story here.

But I’m still here.

The sabbatical I was hoping to take was entirely contingent upon my being able to raise enough money to afford to take care of my wife and children while I was away.

But I just couldn’t do it.

You see, getting up to go and do such a feat requires more than just the will, it requires the means. Going on a bike trip does not require that one be a prolific bike rider exclusively, but, in my circumstances, it also requires one to be a successful fundraiser. And I’m not.

Yet.

——–

But I’m stubborn.

And I taunt the failures that taunt me.

And I hunt them down.

And I destroy them.

So this is not over yet.

——–

You see, one of my greater talents is my ability to assimilate knowledge and learn from it; and one of my other talents (that might also be a blemish) is my refusal to kneel. It’s like what you’d imagine a Borg doing while on the Nebuchadnezzar in the hot seat getting programmed.

Learn fast, don’t give up.

For less than a couple hundred bucks, I’d say that I’ve learned about as much already as a Sophomore in Public Fundraising at a university would have after several thousand dollars in tuition costs. And in two months instead of two years. I’m way ahead of the game.

So here’s the plan going forward:

I’m going to continue in my fundraising efforts for the next few weeks. After that, I have to postpone the whole event (unless I plan on biking through the Rockies in the fine chill of November). Assuming that the immediate continued efforts fail (and they will, barring some extraordinary and unlikely stroke of luck), I will proceed with a two-pronged effort. Simultaneously, over the course of the winter, I will make every effort to save enough myself to be able to pay my own way (which will be difficult because I am the sole income provider, and we live on the margin as it is), and at the same time, I will continue with fundraising efforts.

Once spring rolls around, I hope to dig this venture up out of its grave.

Dereck :: Aug.27.2008 :: CUBE :: 16 Comments »