Heaven

A devout man died and went to heaven. There, he was greeted by seventy virgins. He looked at them and said, "Where are the other two?"

The Soldiers of Truth

They were the new soldiers of truth - just like priests and philosophers before them, their duty was to shed light on the unknown, explain things behind things, and make sense of this world. They were to succeed where philosophers and priests failed - after all, science was on their side. Thus they could not go wrong, they would fearlessly charter into the unknown to illuminate the ignorant masses and explain everything without any trace of a doubt. In short, they were evolutionary psychologists.

On a cold night, they huddled together to discuss the current events and concerns. Their chief took out a list and began:

"It is gay men again... We had had a hard time explaining why they still existed, since they wasted precious resources on non-reproductive ends. As everyone knows, we make a really big deal out of resource allocation efficiency whenever we please, thus this was a glitch hard to overcome. Those days are behind us, fortunately. Now we have to explain why they are promiscuous, after all, we did say that they were women trapped in male bodies. They should have been COY! The public demands an explanation!"

The crowd was stirred, one of them stood up and said: "How about we hypothesize that one part of their brain is still male and promiscuous, and one part of it still female-like?"

The chief exclaimed, "Wonderful! Now we have a theory!"

A young psychologist in the crowd was not happy. "Why are we concocting a theory to reflect the truth?", he asked, "Should we not instead try to predict the reality according to our theories, to test their validity?"

The crowd burst into laughter. Upon hearing this, however, the chief was neither enlightened nor amused. "You must be new to this group," said the chief in a cold manner. The young man nodded.

The chief continued reading from his list. "Now to a new topic... Young people tend to take more risks than the old, since they try to woo women at their age, correct?"

"Correct", the crowd responded.

"Then, why is there a neurological study linking old people to great risk taking? It seems as they get older, they get accustomed to negative events, being, in turn, more resilient to the bad outcomes of a risky endeavor. Any comments?"

The crowd was stirred once again. They argued for a long time. They were not able to come up with a believable answer. Their chief finally said, "How about we work in two teams? The first team will twist the theory to fit the truth, and the other team will twist the truth to fit the theory. You have 20 minutes. And as always, try not to twist the truth or theory too much, we don't want to break them now, do we?"

"Of course not", the crowd replied. The chief went on, "Let's hurry up, though, we are yet to talk about why people sing when they shower. Also, a double blind study confirming the fact that Coke cans touched by taller men are favored more among women than the ones touched by shorter men; we need to go through that one as well."

Suddenly, one of the psychologists said, "I am so tired of twisting the truth, can we not do this another time? Besides, I need to use the restroom."

Others made similar remarks and gestures. The chief finally gave in and concluded the meeting: "All right then, I guess the truth has to be sought some other time."

A Non-Concise Treatise on Nietzschean Thought

We all read it in high school, the dwarf weighing down Zarathustra himself and muttering things in "Thus Spoke Zarathustra" about eternal recurrence, the thought that we will live every choice we make indefinitely, since time (and perhaps space) has no beginning or end. I will hereby try to demonstrate why this childish idea fails even to be an allegory for mankind - or humanity I should say, to keep the gender neutrality.

If an event will occur an infinite number of times (in past and present), it means that this is not the first time I am writing this blog. Then, why do I not remember writing this before? The answer is, of course, that my clone is not the same thing as "me." Nietzsche's copies can live what I am living as many times as they want, but that does not mean anything in my life.

The second interesting point is that the things that I do not do will also occur an infinite number of times, according to eternal recurrence. The choices I did not make, the things that did not happen, will happen at some point in time, just like this, but with very little modifications. As one can see, the eternal recurrence of things has nothing to do with my actions or choices, it just happens according to the infinite number of permutations possible in space-time.

Knowing these, I do not feel that this idea is "horrifying", "terrible", and "wonderful" at the same time. It is more like "childish", "sophomoric", and "reckless." If Nietzsche has critiqued his own work, he would say this idea was a product of a "healthy soul, a non-Christian knight, a new-man on earth," which brings me to another important point.

The greatest mistake Nietzsche made was to base his philosophy on "intentions" of philosophers and schools of thought, rather than logic or truth. For him, Christianity is bad not because of the false logic it conveys, but because it "reflects slave morality." Be it as it may, does it matter what my motives are if I am talking about something that exists, or does not exist? Planck found Quantum Mechanics because his mother beat him (?), Christianity is bad since it is slave morality, Catholicism is nowadays good because it affirms life by letting its priests prey on children (A thought Nietzsche would perhaps approve), Eternal Recurrence is a good idea since it is born out of a pure, non-nihilistic soul. It never ends.

My point is that, people do or say things because of their self-interest, this is in and of itself a tautology. Philosophy, in my opinion, sorts out and seeks out questions and answers about life, not psychology alone. Examining facts or propositions by their face value will almost always yield better results in terms of logical thought, process, and clear philosophical concepts. If these take a back seat in one's thought, one is merely a motivational speaker - Merda taurorum animas conturbit!