Worship Like a Dog at the Shrine of Your Lies

You know my dad was philosopher? He'd spend all day drinking and at about three o'clock in the afternoon when I got home he'd stop and take pen to paper and write out insane drunken ramblings. And when he sobered up several hours later he'd sit their and try to decipher hidden meanings in his own words. Try to pick apart his own logic from his liberated state to uncover underlying truths that might apply not only to himself but to humanity as a whole.

This career choice came about after he was fired from Walmart. He convinced himself that he had unique ideas and an unique outlook and that since philosophy is largely opinion based, that he would be able to take those unique outlooks and bind them together as pages into a book that he was similarly convinced would sell well.

Dad's trip into philosophy taught me an awful lot. That people do whatever they want and justify it later, like when he would drink all day insisting it 'helped him think better'.

That people mean well but rarely do well, like when by father took all my toys to the pawn shop so we could afford food that week and came back with bags full of alcohol.

That people would sooner sink in the ship they know than board a floating ship they don't, like when my mother supported him in this dead end endeavor  for five years before she finally got fed up and left him.

That its better to let go and move on than stick it out for others. Learned that one when I ran away from my new home to visit my father a town over. When I finally got there, after what felt like hours of walking, I find his bloated corpse. He'd drunk himself to death and no one had found him in all that time. He had no friends... lost his family... just best not to look back as a ship sinks you know? Because you can't stop it. So you move on.

I never went home. I was too mad at my mother. He might not have died if she hadn't taken me away. A decision I regretted from that night on but one I never decided to over turn. For all my nights freezing out on the streets, for all my hunger, for all my longing to be found and held my spite over what she had done to my father kept me moving.

That last thing she said to me has always followed me. She said, "Pray for him. If you're good, maybe god will help him over come his demon's. Lord knows he's earned no good will of his own."

The longer I've thought about those words the wronger they have become. That kind of thinking underlines the problem with faith. Or more accurately, the underlying problem with most religions.

'If you're good, maybe god will help.'

Every religion establishes rules. Thing to do. Things not to do. They all enforce a sort of social order. And every religion promises that if you abide then at some point things will get better. Even if it only ever gets better after you die. Religions, in this sense, serve to establish order and generate good will.

And that makes them hypocritical. Because if you are obeying out of belief that this will serve you down the road then what you are doing can't be classified as 'good'. What you are doing is selfish and self-serving. You help others because you believe it will help yourself. You obey not because it is whats right but because it is what is right for you.

Philosophy tells us we should play lip service, even if we don't believe on any level because it costs us nothing to have faith. If there is no god, then we miss out on nothing. But if there is a god and you had no faith then you miss out on everything. Philosophy advises that you 'hedge your bets'. And it is in this way that these religions and the field of philosophy hold us back as a species.

We should not be resigning ourselves to the promise of good fortune in exchange for giving good will and behaving. I'm not saying don't believe. I'm not saying that religions are wrong. But they are holding us back. We should not need a reason to promote good will among ourselves. We do not need to be threatened or bribed into being good people. We should just be good fucking people.

Just don't be a fucking shit head. Is that so hard?

Don't be good because someone wants you to. Just be good because its the right fucking thing to do.

Its in this sense that I find Proxy to be a more honest faith. No one hold any illusions about being a proxy. Why do we serve? Because we want to survive. Why do we worship him? In a desperate bid for mercy. No illusions that this is the right thing to do. No illusions that we are doing what we are doing to help others. Just pure unbastardized self serving murder.

An honest faceless faith.

Sloth out.