existentialism, hockey, matthew 6 and other things

so, yesterday morning i opened my Bible to it's book mark and started reading what i thought was john 7. turns out it was matthew 6. both ended up being amazing, but i liked matthew more... which i find interesting. i have a friend who always says that john is amazing, so i thought i'd start doing it for devo's, but i find it a bit, well, dry. good, but not quite as 'fun' as matthew... if that makes sense?

i just find it to be a bit of a reflection of my friends personality. he's rather reserved and not 'fluid' as a person.. if that makes any sense?

idk, he's ISTJ. google it to understand what i'm talking about.

on to existentialism

we studied it yesterday in philosophy. a few errors occurred to me, but i'm not sure if it's the actual existential viewpoint, or merely my teachers version. he's a solid guy, so i think it might be the actual philosophy.

to summarize, the premise of existentialism (e for short) is that 'existence precedes essence.' basically, it's tabula rasa. we are all born blank slates and the decisions we make form who we are. there is no conscience or such. we decide what is right, we decide what is wrong.

the other main part of e is free will. since existence precedes essence, free will is what shapes our essence. giving up one's free will, or letting some one else decide things for you is called 'bad faith.'

this is where my first issue arises. how, when morality is subjective, can something automatically be assumed to be bad? people who live in bad faith are viewed through some rather harsh lenses, and are seen as weak and inane to e-ists, but that makes the assumption that the essence of wrong precedes the existence of the person making the choice to not have free will.

even then, how can one e-ist say that someone else is wrong? is that up to the other person to decide?

anyways, i'm sure i butchered both e and my view on it, and some philo aficionado is going to stumble across this blog and rip me to shreds.

since i'm probably going to be taken down anyways, lets give them some more ammo:

my 2nd issue with e. they say that rationality and reason dont really exist, since people dont use them to make decisions rather differing to their F preference and going off personal meaning rather than objective value.

they also make the claim that most people live in bad faith. what they fail to mention is that most people live in 'bad faith' because living in 'good faith' (doing as one desires and as one interprets to be correct) would cause society to collapse. the reason people live in 'bad faith' and are engaged in menial jobs and do things they rather wouldn't is because they have used rationality and reason.

they know that throwing away their career wont pay the bills, wont buy food and won't help in any real way.

people are rational to a certain extent. they're mostly insane, but simultaneously rational.

on to hockey...

my aforementioned friend plays in some local league. i can't remember the vowels, but i think it's the 3rd worst/3rd best. it's somewhere in the middle, but closer to being not good.

however, it was a play off game, so there was a very intense atmosphere. to quote one of my wittier tweets from yesterday: "This is as intense as watching two fat people eyeing the last twinkee.."

and yeah, thats about it.. nothing noteworthy has happened yet today. i still have youth to attend, but i think they'll just be showing the olympics.. lame.

speaking of twitter, follow me.

http://twitter.com/obama_winfrey

since i'm handing out links, check my purevolume page for mash-ups:

http://www.purevolume.com/atticusgray

oh, and heres a song quote that i will definately be dissecting more in the future:

"how you live means more than what you believe"

- split the sky, kingdoms