First Impressions

Death is a release from the impressions of the senses, and from desires that make us their puppets, and from the vagaries of the mind, and from the hard service of the flesh. Marcus Aurelius

Mythed by more than a few

Eclectic streams of poop

Disguised as wisdom’s coup

In a ludicrous soup

Unless the writing is

More than poetic biz

I read somewhere, maybe there, on Medium, that all of us are assholes but that some of us are more than one. Asshole*, I am, I know; I take most of the responsibility that accompanies it or goes with it. I read numerous writings during this long first week on Medium and many of them were written by assholes and even with the help of AI, not the same story necessarily, although the AI ones were often better.

As far as we know — and I mean know with consistent data — the human brain seems to be unique, at least in the Solar System. Our encephalon uses five conspicuous senses and perhaps one or more discreet ones to create and recreate our world. Comparing ourselves, we find that we are similar but also different, including twins. How similar? How different? As far as our senses and understanding can process and reach, respectively.

Our conscious and unconscious may appear to be playing games with ourselves and our surroundings. Interpretations are different but similar within groups. The statistics are rather easy and quite reliable. Where do you lie, truth? Surely nowhere on Earth, as far as we know. There are those — many of them — that swear by and kill for their so-called truth(s), yet all of them are obviously wrong, and that is a nice way to put it — as all of them only have some unreliable data or no data at all.

Science is not a belief system, although some assumptions are often adopted as truths by erring and or unscientific brains. Religions and dogmas are aplenty, but not as numerous as dogs and cats; overrated animals because they can easily become pets, mistreated or not. As Asshole, I prefer plants, and not those needlessly dying in a vase. No creature, at least on Earth, is more beautiful than a tree.

It is often difficult and also unadvisable to criticise a religion, even if it is a reliable dogma, unless it is a dead one such as the religion of Ancient Egypt. Most people may think and hold that Ancient Greece’s religion is also departed, but it is still alive in Greece and maybe elsewhere, and is therefore not a mythology, even if it is considered thus by academia. By the way, academia is also filled with lies, many of them convenient and dogmatic, and extremely dangerous.

Is there a religion — a belief system — that I, Asshole, can critique, mostly negatively, that is, here, on Medium, and or Vocal? It was quite simple to find one on Medium, although its falsely flamboyant self-declared ruler — asinine all the way to the heart of the Cosmos (wherever that may be) — is surely not the right or left representative of this wishful unthinking soulful inclination.

Bodies die and souls live on, appears to be their principal tenet, mostly adopted from Eastern religions and philosophies and then fitted with some Western new-age notions. An amalgam (without the mercury) of immortality, reincarnation, soul-over-body stances and other so-called niceties permeates this apparently innocuous doctrine that is nothing but, especially when some of its proponents are basically making up their truth(s).

Many of them claim to have lived multiple lives, over 18K lives in one case (a golden existence), and human ones at that; it is specified (some of these multi-lifers must have lived alien lives as well). At a conservative average of 36 years per life, this immortal — a male — has been living for 612,000 human years; his soul, that is. He even boasts in one of his comments — an attack really — to someone else’s comment about the nonexistence of the soul, that he, 18K+ lives, was a slave owner, a woman slave, and other less colourful beings during his many (too many) lives. I wonder if he happened to have been a Nazi as well and neglected to mention it. Am I being an asshole? I can see the Hitch smiling.

I will not continue much further because I do not want to take the risk of changing their mind(s), especially that it all happens there, in the grey and white matters of the brain. If some type of happiness is rendered by their beliefs, then good for them. The truth, however illusive it may be, is not for every body. I will only add that even if they are right, I still find their soul scenario and narrative both disappointing and disgusting. Why? I will let you think about it. I do not want to weaken anyone’s belief, as long as it does not hurt the continued pursuit of the truth.

To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering. Nietzsche

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Please note that Asshole, a.k.a Greta Room, is the name of one of my narrators; the newest, at less than a year. It is she who had spent over a week on Medium. She must have a good soul. She is no longer on Medium for a few other reasons. But what are her impressions of Vocal?