Well I thought this was just way too big to be one of my trademark hugeass comments, so here it is, in artcile form. This is intended as a response to Akodem1x's response to my most recent article. Woo!

A good response, Ako, I have to say, but I think you missed a few things. At any rate, for that reason and others, there are a few points on which I'd like to explain myself better.

1) How do I judge which of my various (or these two main) viewpoints or frameworks or lacks thereof is most accurate with respect to the world? I can't. Because they ARE the world, as I see it. What I'm describing here is my very picture of what the world is, so I have only these differing perspectives and no means by which to identify, prioritize or rationalize them. I can just guess, and it's not even an educated guess; it's a complete shot in the dark. How do I solve the obvious problems this creates? I haven't the faintest clue. :)

2) I think it's extremely suspicious that various constructs both natural and man-made (as if we are not agents of nature - hah!), ranging from octopi to robots made of disk drives, exhibit, though completely bereft of brains, per se, behaviour that is startlingly similar to many human patterns - ones we often attribute to our superior intelligence and relative complexity. Shyness, for example. When a person acts "shy", we like to think of it in an emotional context, because it reinforces our beliefs that we are the dominant race in our own known universe. Psychologists love to cite environmental factors, brain chemistry, recent stories of acceptance or rejection, significant events in childhood and relationships with parents, genetics and a variety of other factors in explanation for shyness. But some sperm cells also exhibit all of the same behaviours, and they lack so much as a single synapse. It was almost ten years ago now that I began to suspect, based on the predictability of human behaviour, that we are nothing more than bags of water, vitamins and hormones, that are roughly autonomous and thus generate the illusion of intelligence.

If this is true of all of us, though, why are we having this conversation, and who is there to be fooled by this illusion, and why do we have words like "illusion" to describe such things? I think that in denying human sophistication and intelligence, one takes the wrong perspective. Unquestionably, undeniably, we ARE. Before you jump on me here for contradicting myself, I didn't - that is not a belief, it is a simple, unprocessed observation. Where we are, why we are, in what context we exist, I couldn't tell you - in fact, that's why I wrote the article in the first place. The undue arrogance comes not in taking note of our own existence as intelligent, thoughtful beings, but in glorifying that, and suggesting for a second that that itself, that incredibly potent and obviously present intelligence that we DO exhibit, is anything more than the byproduct of shifting hormone levels and accidental synaptic activity.

Having said all of that, I would like to mention that I didn't say "I think therefore I am." That was Rene Descartes, or so history has told me. I said, "I think, therefore I probably am." My insertion of the word "probably" was in fact my entire reason for putting that down at all. It was never intended as a recognition of my evident existence, but rather one of the inherent naivete in Descartes' infamous words. I'm saying that unlike him, I'm not so arrogantly certain of anything, even the self-evident.

3) I do not allow my emotions to dominate me. This is due both to the superior emotional control that is my implied claim in that sentence, as well as the fortunate (for me) fact that I simply do not feel them as strongly as others appear to. My thoughts in previous articles or statements regarding my willingness to kill may be motivated by emotion, but if I ever reached the eventual decision to kill someone, it would not be born of a single shred of emotion, but rather a logical process which dictated to me that the person needed to die in order to maintain my own personal safety, or perhaps that of family, friends, or the general public. My thoughts on who needs to die and who does not are exclusively the result of the very moral philosophy that you fear we relinquish in such complex circumstances; the anger and emotion come into play only in causing me to talk about it on Pile of Crap.

I am most certainly against killing without reason, but my second statement was not against killing itself. It was only intended to say that it is a last resort, and an acknowledgement of weakness and helplessness. One's helplessness to solve a dangerous problem any other way is the best reason to kill, in my opinion; I just don't think it should be seen as a sign of strength and domination over the world to kill your enemies, when it is clearly (to me) the opposite.

4) Purpose and strength are things that you need when you already know how you ought to live. None of my philosophies are exercises, and few provide answers to them. I find most exercises in philosophy to be pointless wastes of time - that is, most that are generated by others. This one, however, is interesting. If an eleven year old girl were to ask me how one should live, and why, I would relate to her as best I could my own philosophy, labelled as such, and tell her that she had to develop her own based on her own intelligence and her own circumstances. It's not my business to dictate that; only to suggest my thoughts. As for the "why", I can't fully explain that to a child. They would not be capable of understanding the motivations for my philosophy. Frankly, most adults are not capable of understanding the motivations for my philosophy, nor were they capable seven years ago of understanding the motivations behind that of the lost and confused 13 year old that I used to be. My parents understood fine, but the "helpful" advice of social workers, teachers, relatives, etc., betrayed their supidity and small-mindedness even then. They could not have understood, because they simply were not concerned with the things that concerned me deeply. And that was then. If I opened my mind now to almost any of the adult mentors in my childhood life, and told them of the problems that plague my mind night and day, I think they would be caused irreparable psychological trauma. The dumbfounded stares and brush-off responses I received when I tried this as a child suggest that, certainly. It's a good thing, in a way, that most of them have religion to tell them how they ought to live, because I honestly don't think their minds could handle the question were it posed as one - as it should be.

5) My convictions are set in stone, firm as can be, I assure you - until such time as their entire basis is permanently altered, at which point I will be forced to re-evaluate them. As for the other, I don't think that being devoid of firm beliefs is anywhere near as dangerous as harbouring them. Can I question them? Hell, man, I have to verify them constantly before making any significant decision. Nothing is ever taken for granted in my mind, and if I slip up and go against that, I feel like a dumbass for weeks, months, years, maybe forever. Perhaps my statements were too generalized - I didn't mean to suggest there was anything wrong with firmly believing in a philosophy; it was the firm belief in what does and does not exist, and how, that bothers me. The firm belief in what your senses, however many of them you may have, are telling you. I don't think it's useful or safe, and this comes from the many experiences in my life where all of my senses simultaneously have told me the same untrue story. As for faith, well, faith makes me uncomfortable, as you might have guessed. It follows naturally that one so suspicious as I of things which are self-evident, and plainly, unquestionably true, would be very displeased with the notion of accepting something without even that evidence. And as I've discussed before in previous articles and comments, that is what faith means to me - a solid belief without reason, for once you have reason to believe it, it becomes a theory, a law, or a fact, or simply a belief.

As for that other "faith", faith in the sense of confidence - well, that's another story. Your faith, or confidence perhaps, in human kind to do the right thing? Well I don't know how much you have. :) I don't know if I have any, myself, but that doesn't mean that I'm without hope, because it IS your planet, and it's mine too, and it certainly doesn't belong in whole or in part to anyone who disrespects it. The same goes for society, economy, and in my opinion, life itself.

Having said all of this, I will say also that I'm tired, and I think I need to stop writing now. I've covered most of what I wanted to. Woo me! Thanks for the response. :)