Michael Mitchell: Archive

BYE BYE MYSTICISM

Premise: Money is evil.

Premise: Everyone depends on money to live.

Conclusion: Everyone is evil.

There is no God. No heaven or hell. We only have one life in this world and no other. If this is true, how would that change our idea or concept of what's right and wrong, good and evil?

If you trace most of your feelings of guilt and shame and regret back to reality, back to the actual qualities and actions you're judging, you'll find you can't prove or explain your evaluations, that you don't know why something is good or evil without referencing your understanding of someone else's idea of good and evil -- parents, teachers, friends, religion, government, etc. -- that your sense of ethics is not based on your own interests, on your own wants and goals and plans and beliefs and actions, but on your perception and understanding of what others think of them, on outside judgment completely disconnected from what's being judged: you. This inability to distinguish what you think is good from what other people think is good is the problem with every fucking thing.

This is not a controversial view. It's the rationalization for God and religion and most philosophies and social systems. It's the foundation of the idea that we need an authority higher than our own minds, that we're incapable of managing our own lives without guidance or coercion by some special few who somehow know what they say we can't. The concept of "original sin" refers to the "shame" of being human.