Zeus Rulzzz.

So I’m reading this book. Doubt: A History, by Jennifer Michael Hecht. It’s interesting, essentially its about how doubting has changed society and belief and history, not huge events like war and such. I like it, because I feel like its people like me, in the background, who’ve also changed the world much more than we possibly could see. I’m also a little skeptical about the concept because… the great doubters were still very famous people who changed the world. So isn’t it a paradox, saying these are the sort of “in between” events, but they were still life changing so obviously they didn’t go unnoticed? Heh, anyway.. I like the book.

I guess I wanted to write down some stuff, before moving on to the next “era” if you wish. It’s interesting to me that the Olympic gods, Greek gods, were once pretty much generally accepted. As gods, I mean. Obviously the god of war caused war, Dionysius created wine, Apollo did his thing, etc. And Zeus ruled them all. These were not uncommon statements and really.. when people started questioning these gods I think what I find most intriguing was that they turned to a holistic perspective: Either everything was divine, or there was no divinity at all, only what we could see and touch, etc.

It makes me wonder what happened to those people. I mean, obviously I don’t know what they were thinking and there’s no history anywhere about what everyone in the world was thinking through at that time.. but what if that was the only knowledge? Then does God/Jesus/being saved just get thrown out the window for them? Did they all just go to hell cause they believed what they saw and what they knew at the time? The sun came up every morning and went down every night, so they named someone to be responsible, a creator of sorts. Seems pretty reasonable to me. So why punish them for only doing the things they know how to do? Hm.

And what’s so wrong with the philosophies they ended up with, anyway? Hecht calls them “graceful-life” philosophies, and I like the name. I also like the idea of them.

“The experience of doubt… is a lot like being lost in a forest, unendingly beckoned by a thousand possible routes. At every juncture, with every step, one is confronted with alternative paths, so that the second-guessing becomes more infuriating even than the fact of being lost. After a direction is chosen, one is constantly met with another tree in one’s path. What do you do if you come from a culture that had a powerful sence of home and local value, and now you are lost in something vast and sprawling, meaningless and strange? The stronger your belief in that half-remembered home, the more likely you are to panic, to grow claustrophobic among the trees and beneath their skyless canopy. Hellenistic men and women felt a desperate desire to get out of the seemingly endless, friendless woods. The graceful-life philosophies of this period were about to achieve an amazing recue mission for the human being lost in the woods and bone-tired of searching for home.”

Isn’t that what we ARE doing? Wandering around taking different paths every few generations, trying to come to some understanding? Part of me wants to think yeah, Jesus was here SO long ago of course it seems like history, like something unrealistic, something I wouldn’t remember or couldn’t fully grasp cause I wasn’t there… but another part says how do I KNOW that idea isn’t just another tree in my path? I don’t. And if I keep searching.. aimlessly, wandering, wondering… won’t I just find another path to take for a while? I guess there’s nothing saying I can’t choose to stay on the same one, but the point is that I DO have a choice.

But here’s what these philosophers started thinking:

“.. we could stop being lost if we were to just stop trying to get out of the forest. Instead, we could pick some blueberries, sit beneath a tree, and start describing how the sun-dappled forest floor shimmers in the breeze. The initial horror of being lost utterly disappears when you come to believe fully that there is no town out there, beyond the forest, to which you’re headed. If there is no release, no going home, then this must be home, this shimmering instant replete with blueberries.”

It amuses me she goes on to say when you fully grasp that idea, you start to pity the people still scrambling for truth and answers. Because if they’d just be still for a moment they’d see that they can be content where they’re at. I think I’d love to be still for a moment, to sit and listen. To really hear something significant.

There’s a pattern here, though. I mean, these philosophies were arising back when Socrates and Aristotle lived. If they were thinking it then, obviously we moved away from that. Even today I can’t fully grasp the concept of just accepting things as they are, and that’s because thinking has changed. It’s changed and grown and molded a lot. And my personal thinking has been shaped around Christianity and what it means to follow Jesus Christ, which obviously separates my views from Hecht, who wrote the book as a historian.

I find it endlessly interesting, though, the thoughts on death and pain. Epicurus, I think, even words it beautifully; “Death, therefore, the most awful of evils, is nothing to us, seeing that when we are, death is not come, and when death is come, we are not.” Hah. If we’re alive, we’re not dead.. and when we’re finally dead.. we won’t CARE cause we’re dead. Its so simple, I love it. Its so simple and so… true. Things like that have merit to them, too, whether there’s an afterlife of some sort or not.

Epicurus also decided the gods, although real, didn’t actually care what we’re doing at all. Which kinda makes me giggle.

Even before the idea of the one God, the Father, Jesus, all that.. people were running from the idea of the divine. Of a creator who would regulate us. Epicurus also talks about how just indulging in the pleasures of life (named food, drink, and sex basically) IS happiness itself. Just LIVE and you’re at the epitome of life. He lived in a way that his behavior created his happiness, which is true today anyway. If I sit alone day and night, never speak to another person, obviously I won’t be happy. I have to get up, engage, let my behaviors cause me to be happy, or at least allow some sort of happiness to touch me before I actually AM happy.

On another note, the people in this period of time crack me up. They are satirical and sarcastic and real in their own ways. A dude named Timon wrote a satire about how anyone who claims to know something for certain is an arrogant buffoon. Like, anything at ALL. Even that the sky is blue. He was a great skeptic of the period, saying basically if you claim to know anything you’re stupid. Because not knowing was appreciated and accepted. Doubting was fundamental to achieving contentedness and happiness. “Since we know nothing for certain, we must behave as such, affirming and denying nothing, no matter what the subject.” That, that right there tickles my fancy. That’s right up my passive aggressive alley : )

Oh, I love the idea that doubt leads us to something bigger. That doubt is necessary, just like fear is necessary for bravery. I love that doubting is acceptable. That its real and tangible and… creates great ideas. And its funny to me that NO idea is an idea in itself. That not knowing things, not believing things, are their own philosophy. And I love the simplicity of it. Of just living to live. Of parking it right in the middle of the big, windy confusing forest and staying there, content, munching on berries. Of course, I’ve tried that, and sitting there for too long I tend to get restless and begin asking questions all over again. But there’s the next idea: being content in asking questions and not receiving answers. We’re too conditioned to get what we want. Maybe we don’t need anything, and this really IS a juvenile search.