Funny thing. My wife wanted Instapunk to go away. She likes the Scot in me, just not the Scot who goes for the kill when a simple wounding will do.
My main point is even simpler than hers. Life is about living. Which means never yielding, never surrendering, never accepting what other people tell you should be your fate.
Here’s one stanza of one of the greatest poems ever written. By a middle aged Hartford insurance executive who drank his orange juice, read his Wall Street Journal, and dashed off a few lines of verse before driving to work.
Sunday Morning
By Wallace Stevens
She hears, upon that water without sound,
A voice that cries, “The tomb in Palestine
Is not the porch of spirits lingering.
It is the grave of Jesus, where he lay.”
We live in an old chaos of the sun,
Or old dependency of day and night,
Or island solitude, unsponsored, free,
Of that wide water, inescapable.
Deer walk upon our mountains, and the quail
Whistle about us their spontaneous cries;
Sweet berries ripen in the wilderness;
And, in the isolation of the sky,
At evening, casual flocks of pigeons make
Ambiguous undulations as they sink,
Downward to darkness, on extended wings
Nothing is the way you think it is. Nothing. You kids. You’re fools. You’re all just awful. Knowing nothing is the worst preparation for life imaginable.
What are Instapunk Rules? The only defense against a worthless, meaningless existence. Learn or die. It’s that simple.
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Shammadamma.
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Don’t give up on this. I’m very interested to see how you reconcile a meaningful existence with a God who has the power to abrogate all consequence. I don’t think it can be done. But if anyone can…
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Curious. When did your atheism become the only perspective from which you can approach anything? It has become a religion with you, and you have become a fanatic in its service. So when? What happened in your mental development in what sequence? Rand first, then a distillation to what you deem pure rationalism? Or a hostility to religion in general that was crystallized by the simple purity of Rand? Or something altogether other?
And, no, I am not inviting another abusive fire and brimstone sermon. I want an answer to my question. If it turns out to be another scornful and condescending personal assault, I won’t approve it. I have no readers who have any interest in that. I owe them more than that.
An answer, to be clear about my definition, includes plenty of first person pronouns and adjectives. It reads like intellectual and moral autobiography, not a polemic against anyone and everyone who dares commit the, to you, sin of faith of an intelligent agency behind the universe.
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