First row, baby, first row

Is there really anything better than a ticket to a gig you've been waiting your entire life to see?
and FIRST ROW?? and not just the seat next to the aisle either, but right smack in the middle?

I very much doubt it.

Sad to report though that the gig is just about the only thing going right in my life. At least with the ticket, there is a high certainty of its taking place but there are so many things in life that are unexpected, and cannot be satisfactorily explained or reasonably accounted for; I really do thank my lucky stars every single night.

Non Sum Qualis Eram

I know it's been a long long time since I've last posted. Thanks for the emails asking if I'm alright etc. It's quite cool to be missed when one is away. Nothing much happened, life-wise. Everything else is still pretty much the same, but life has lost most of its "blog-ability" appeal for me. I dont go around looking for things to blog, nor do I think "hey I should tell someone about this" when I see somethign nice or cool, or just different. Most of the times, I'm just trying to get home in one piece.

I'm not trying to be depressing or anything; just laying it out as it is. Life has become more and more routine for me. I wake up early (6:18 to be exact but anything before 7am is equally painful) to travel about one and a half hours (give or take) to a place where everythign is so routine you can set the clock by the things I do. I'm not complaining or anything; I appreciate that the routine provides a focus for one's life and makes it easier to put it together if it should ever fall apart but sometimes I find myself using the routine as a crutch rather than a focus. For example, I use it as an excuse not to do certain things (like meeting up with friends on week nights: i just can't do it).

Reading what I've just written, I sound so depressing! Like I've just lost the will to live or somethign. That's not true! I've still got plenty of things goign for me. I have a job that pays (more or less) my bills and and the sometimes-frivolous purchases. I have pretty ok health (though i'm still smoking) and family are ok. So yeah, things are not exactly despondent or anything bad. But yet, something is different: In an effort to get home in one piece (through the traffic/crowds etc) everyday, somehow I dont stop and look at what makes the day different from the previous day anymore. I recognise that and I want that to change. I want to be able to tell the days apart from one another. I want to be able to say I dont have any regrets should I get run down by a truck. Sorry, is that too morbid?

I want to accomplish this not by having different things happening, but more about feeling differently about things each day. I'm not sure if I'm getting coherently across to anyone. I just want to feel more. I've been thinking too much; I need to feel more.

There is no God

I came across this article a while ago and it's very interesting. The author has an interesting position on the issue of religion, particularly atheism and agnosticism. I've always thought of myself as an agnostic. My family isnt, though so it's actually curious why I'm not. I've never been too interested in religion from young, not actively anyway.

As I got older, I realise that I dont really mind if there is a god or not. There probably is, but it doesnt matter to me. Something from a philosophy class long ago always stayed with me: Levinas, a devout Jew, tried to prove that there is a god using the following analogy: (Warning: the following is an extremely simplified explanation, from what I can recall from class)

if we think of ourselves as finite beings (which we of course are), there has to be something beyond that subtends our existence, much like an island cannot be identified as such without the waters surrounding it. In this way, we can think of God as infinite, since by negation, he cannot be finite like us. And the only way we can exist is because there is an infinite beyond what we know.

Levinas tried to take the intellectual route (ie logic, negation, conclusion and what not) to prove his faith. I like the way he argues as intellectual reasoning is the way to get to me. But I also recognise that as interesting as it is, it seems that he is using apples to measure oranges.

In the article however, the author is instead actively believing that there is no god and the notion of belief has always been interesting to me. I think a distinction has to be drawn between belief and faith. I've always thought that belief meant a kind of confidence in something more or less concrete, whether it can be proven or not. It seems more shakeable than the notion of faith, which we always associate with blindness; we say "blind faith" but not "blind belief." But the author's belief in a non-existence of god is interesting since it's hard to prove what isn't there.

Maybe the author is just twisting words around to create new impressions and new viewpoints but isnt that exactly what thinking entails, no matter if it's religion or politics? How can one steadfastly stick to a point of view without considering the others? With a bit of logic and common sense, it's hard to understand why people refuse to consider "the other side." Does the adamant and almost stubbornly blind refusal to recognise other viewpoints make yours any more true, or you a more devout person?

I would think that the reverse is more likely to hold true but that's just me. I may have been so far gone to the "other side" that arguments without an immediately recognisable structure of reason and logic will inevitably fail to illuminate me. This is why, I'm also, right now trying to find a book by Immanuel Kant that i think I should reread. It's called The One Possible Basis for a Demonstration of the Existence of God.