Truth in the Life of a Geek

Truth in the Life of a Geek

"I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use." -Galileo Galilei

"In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. But, in practice, there is." -Jan L.A. van de Snepscheut

Here's how the world began: . That's it. That is the reason for existence, faith, death, and calculus. No really, it is. That's how four college-bound seniors summed it up. I would know. I'm one of them. Had they answered any differently, I would have had to call them liars to their faces. NO ONE KNOWS. GROW UP. So we did. We didn't know, but we could speculate. And we did. This is what this book added up to: the exploration of the universe and all of its mysteries by a bunch of geeks. Nerds. You read me? Good. Enjoy.

It started as an English project, and took on a life of its own. Page after page, line after line, we four wrote the meaning of life. Or at least its meaning to us. Screw the rest of the world. We're teenagers, we don't care. It started as a joke, mostly, one of us poking holes in another's argument about morals and ethics, someone else arguing an entire period about the way time is going forwards instead of backwards and how time travel would be impossible. Or so they think. I think they're wrong. Then that crazy English teacher, who shall remain nameless, proposed the project of a lifetime: produce art, spread it to the world, get an A. That simple. An hour later, we concocted a plan to spread our doctrine into the universe. And here we are. Right here, right now.

As you read this, read the meaning behind the words. We are writing about every facet of our beliefs, our emotions, our minds, and our hearts. We are bearing it all in this one work of art, this one cover-to-cover journey into the psyche of an average, college-bound, senior high, profoundly absent of normalcy, geek. Read and understand. You or your child may be one of us.

As you read this, not only are we expanding upon our original ideas, we are growing into more profound human beings. Ideas are the chariots of the mind, guiding in the direction of learning and knowledge. By writing our ideas, not only do we advance our learning, but we aid in the learning of others, just like Chicken Soup for the Soul is supposed to do, only using morals and emotions and lessons for better living as a guide. We're using us. Profound. Very profound. And by using ourselves in such a way, we not only expand our learning, we gain a better understanding of ourselves and each other. Also profound.

There's a flip-side to this book, too. We don't know what we're writing about either. Each one of us writes a page. I took the first. As each page is finished, it is passed on to the next writer, who takes that page and that page alone and writes a second page. That second page is sent to the third person, who writes the third page without ever seeing the first page. He only has knowledge of the page written before his. There are four of us, and we plan to write a number of pages, expanding on each other's ideas as well as starting some of our own. In this way, we draw closer to each other, and become not only closer friends, but faster typers. I'm really slow. The next guy's faster. Really. You should see him. He's a maniac. See? We're closer friends already. I'd tell you to try it yourself, but if you're reading this book, you're probably a geek too. Too bad you don't have many friends to write with. Read on anyway. Read on. NOW.

************

“IN THE BEGINNING there was dark. All the universe was without form. But order was imposed upon the chaos. Stars coalesced, ignited, blazed, and died. A thousand thousand worlds were spun out of dust, in obedience to perfect law. And so it was for a thousand thousand thousand years. And then on a common world, revolving around a common star, life arose. Simple creatures, at least at first, bacteria and plants, evolving into fish, and lizards, and birds, and mice, and apes, and men, and whatever they shall be tomorrow. And there may be more and better worlds that we can't even see. So that's your answer. From apes, from viruses, from an ordinary lump of thrice-processed stellar matter, and finally from nothing.”

“But where did the matter come from?” asked the Student.

“From God, perhaps. It was always there. Or, more accurately, not there.”

“So,” said the Student, “Who is God?”

“He is that He is,” the Master responded. “His identity has no meaning. He has no source. He is, He always was, and He shall forever be. God is His own purpose.”

“So he willed himself into existence?”

“Precisely. From God and nothing come everything.”

A pause. Replied the Student, “Bullshit.”

“Look,” said the Master, “That's the way it is.”

“Oh?” the Student asked, faintly amused, “So an invisible man who lives in the sky determines my destiny?”

“No, no,” the master sighed. They were so difficult at this age. “That's not what I said. God started it all, He made the laws. And He could intervene if he wanted to.”

“Just what are you basing that belief on?”

“Generations of philosophers and scientists,” replied the Master, perhaps a bit smugly.

“But isn't it said,” the Student insisted, “That the only trustworthy source is one's own? That value judgments from those in authority are no more valid than those of the common man?”

“These are not value judgments!” the Master said, losing patience. “This is fact. It is where the world came from, where life came from, where even you came from.”

“From a meaningless rock? A meaningless ape? Surely we're better than that. I'm better than a worthless existence. No pawn of God or science – I'll live my own life.”

The Student departed. The Master waited.

* * * * *

The alarm rings. I roll toward the sound, reaching over to flip the switch while blinking sleep from my eyes. I'd been up till 2 the previous morning writing a dreadful English paper, and the world looks foggy and red. Finally heaving myself out of bed, I pull on some clothes and stumble down the hall to the waiting box of Frosted Flakes.

The Frosted Flakes, though, did not give me the sugary kick I was looking for. I ended up walking around that day, still nearly as red eyed and tired as I had been when I first stumbled out of bed. I could not shake the dream I had last night, though. Something about the way the world works, and I am a skeptic. The master and his student. The beginning of the universe, spun out of nothing by the will of god, the creator.

But something about it was different than what is usually taught; We have to be the center, the purpose, the reason for the Universe to exist. God created the Universe for us, we say, because we need to feel important. The reality is so much more bleak. My dream seemed closer to the truth…thousands of thousands of stars and planets created not by a God who cares about humans, but whose abstract existence is merely to give an explanation for the existence of the Universe.

It’s all a load of crap. God, the meaning of life, the purpose of our existence. How small am I to the rest of the Universe? I am nothing. Would the Universe care if the rest of the world exploded? If humanity ceased to exist? No. There is no God; there is only the cold, hard logic of science.

****

“How many faiths are there in the world? Does anybody know? Can anybody name a few of them? Well, we start with the major religions; Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, all are unique in their beliefs.”

“Christianity teaches that everyone who doesn’t believe in Jesus Christ as the son of God will go to hell or purgatory, doesn’t it?”

“Why, yes, Carl, that’s true.”

“Well doesn’t that mean that all Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims, and everyone who is not a Christian going to hell or purgatory?”

“Well, that could be your opinion, but many also believe that God has a place in heaven for all who have led a just, if slightly misguided life.” “But that is just an opinion. How can it be a fact if many different and people believe in something different?”

“Well, I…”

“Furthermore, how do the Hindus, Buddhists, and Muslims feel about their own faith? They don’t think that they are misguided. There are many more people in the world who think that Christianity is misguided than Christians themselves.”

“Um, that’s a difficult…”

“I mean, how can we legitimately say that our God exists and their God or gods don’t? They believe that our God doesn’t exist and their God or gods do. So who is correct? We are defining the Universe, here, there must be a right answer, it cannot change between individuals. There must be a solid Truth.” “Carl, are you saying that the God my parents have believed in, and their parents have believed in, and my whole family has believed in for generations just doesn’t exist?”

“Children, please…”

“Does you and your families God exist while billions of other people’s gods don’t? Is your family somehow more enlightened than everybody else? The point is that everybody is trying to define the truth, and yet because everyone’s beliefs are contradictory to everyone else’s, how can any of it be true?”

****

I figured I was going to go to hell after Carl got done chewing out the teacher. Everything he said was so convincing that surely no one faith could be right. And even if whatever god there is forgives the misguided, then people who don’t belong to any faith would still end up in hell. And, being one of those people, I wasn’t sure I so much liked being an atheist anymore.

I was originally drawn to atheism by doubts in my religious upbringing and the desire not to be obligated to what I was supposed to believe. Every religion I could think of required things of its followers: christians had to go to church every Sunday and cannibalize this guy Jesus. Jews had to go to temple every Friday night, wear little hats on their heads, and observe dietary restrictions which changed depending on the time of year. Muslims had to pray towards Mecca, some place they may not yet have seen, several times a day, and eventually go there on a pilgrimage of great religious value. Hindus had to build shrines to their assorted gods in their homes, not to mention keep track of all the assorted gods and what they were responsible for. And it always seemed that each other religion I could think of required their followers to do ridiculous things.

Couldn’t religion just be spiritual without having to be ritualistic? Why couldn’t people just believe in things without having to do nonsensical things to affirm it? I suppose that’s why Carl believed so fully in science and so blatantly shot down religion. And I suppose that’s why I didn’t follow any religion at all. But it wasn’t because I thought science was entirely right. I just thought that people followed these crackpot religions because they needed to. They needed something to believe in. Sure, the chances of some stellar being creating the world entirely for us were ludicrous. But if it gave people an explanation for our existence beyond dumb luck, then it was acceptable to them. As for me, I just didn’t know. I wasn’t alive when the world was created, and I doubted I’d be alive when it was destroyed, so I really didn’t take any interest in the creation. I suppose it’s feasible that all the matter in the universe exploded out of a small dot, but that sounds about as plausible as the “big man in the sky” theory. Either way, I was an atheist not because I thought religion was wrong, but because I thought it was dumb.

But then Carl shot all of it down in class. He took a stand against religion, forging a path in the name of science. And I figured that was fine... but I couldn’t get the teacher’s words out of my head: “God has a place in heaven for all who have led a just, if slightly misguided life.” I tried my best to sum up the situation: if Carl was right about science governing the universe, then when I died I would be lost in the void, and my body would rot away as my essence vanished into nothingness. I would cease to exist. But if the teacher was right, then as an atheist I would be banished into the fiery depths of hell for all eternity. They both seemed pretty bleak.

****

The alarm clock on my nightstand buzzed aloud and flashed its large green readouts in an effort to wake me from yet another dream. Slowly I regained consciousness, the gray haze of the world forming the walls and doors I knew so well, and all sounds fading to the loud screech of morning. I lazily threw my arm in the direction of the noise to shut the damn thing off, hitting the lamp and day-to-day calendar before finally finding the switch. And as my room filled with silence once again, I drifted back into a sound sleep, where I spent the rest of my Saturday morning dreaming of the family I had left behind in Tallahassee.

Until 7:30 I had a lovely time. Then my mother completely destroyed the dream. Bummer. Now I had to get dressed and go to another day of work. Yes, another. Would they ever end? The answer was, of course, yes, but how could a teenager like me ever see that?

So I went to work, nearly fell asleep, came back home, did fall asleep, and dreamed once more of the family I had left behind in Tallahassee. Or was it Memphis? I couldn’t remember, nor did I care. This time, though, the dream had a more... imaginative... ending. My dream-family and I spiraled off into Hell, only to be spat back out again into...

I woke up sweating. Perhaps faith isn't such a bad thing. Something my pastor once told me, a very long time ago, surfaces. If there is a heaven and a hell, and faith will lead to one and doubt to another, then faith will see me into heaven, but if there is nothing, both faith and doubt will be useless. So what's the harm in a little faith? None, really. But could I really have faith in what I couldn't see, or worse yet, could I have faith in a deity so easily mocked, so easily scorned, so easily dismissed? I didn't know. I could save these thoughts for another day.

The day started about noon for me, just after the cartoons I nearly missed from sleeping in so late. After my little bout of faith versus doubt, I grabbed a bite to eat and headed for other issues on my schedule---my homework. Yippee. Hooray. Homework. I just love homework. There's Chem, History, and Math. The first and last I can deal with, they're both on my list of favorite-things-to-do, but I just can't seem to wrap my head around why all these dead people made such stupid mistakes. Oh well, hindsight is perfect, and sarcasm doesn't solve any problems. Today, we have to read about the moral and psychological implications of the Nazi movement in Germany. That's not so bad as to warrant a groan. The whole idea of it is that Nazism, because of its militaristic and totalitarian aims, used the masses as a way to manipulate the individual in the masses, namely by removing their individual thought---this action or that six million or so deaths was for the good of the Aryan race, Germany, and the whole entire world, once it was under reign of the Third Reich, of course. It reminds me almost of going to school as a kid---the crowd of children could mock the strangest one with no feeling of guilt because they were part of a group---no blame could be put on their shoulders alone. I saw it happen all the time, when I was a kid. I'll leave it at that.

My homework's done, so it's time for a little more napping, or thinking, in my case. I still feel that there's something more to say about God and religion. Why should I fit into a religious mold? Wouldn't faith be enough? Faith, and the simple guidelines set down in every major religion in the world: The Ten Commandments, or something akin to them. These ten commandments sent from God are supposed to be the main focal point of following God and living life. Simple, yet profound. A set of ten rules to live life by, without argument. I follow them myself, most of the time unknowingly. Would these in addition to faith be enough? Perhaps.

What God to believe in, though? Allah, Yahweh, Jesus (apparently part of a Holy Trinity that's still one supreme being), all of these deities, and no idea which was the right one. All of them differ only by a slight margin of rules— diet, prayer, or language of prayer.

Time to move on. I feel the urge to speak on... Love, the subject that causes the greatest joys and griefs of mankind, seems like such a simple thing, does it not? You love a person, and that's that. And that makes everything better, right? Since clearly something is missing.

Religion, that can't be it, can it? So many possibilities, none of them feeling quite right. Endless proofs for and against God. But have faith, my pastor says. I do, I don't doubt God... but is mine the right way to worship him? What if the real God is the Old Testament version, and the increasing value of human life since then has infused Him with false compassion? Is ours the original or the modern God? It doesn't hurt to have faith, but what if when we die it turns out that the One True Faith is some obscure cult? Perhaps one that dislikes my faith, and then what?

It's pretty clear that I'm not going to get anywhere trying to find the truth this way. I feel a bit ashamed to give up so easily where generations of philosophers have persevered, but I need to wonder how much closer to the truth they are than I. At the risk of sounding like an average American, what makes his opinion more valid than the next man's?

Of course I cannot criticize intellectualism, I'll probably end up a philosopher... or a physicist... or a potter... or an ubergeek... or an astronomer... or a historian... or a chemist... or a photojournalist... or an archeologist...or an astronaut...

Now, back to the question, what's missing? First, to follow good ol' Plato, we should prove that something is indeed missing. That's rather hard to do logically. But try this experiment. Right now. Sit down, though you probably already are, and think about this. How old are you? Divide that by your expected lifespan – about 80 years if you're lucky – and that's the percentage of your life that's over. Have you accomplished anything in that time? What did you want to do when you were young and sure of yourself and confident that nothing could bog you down? Have you done it, any of it? Are you proud of yourself?

Now take that percentage you got. Subtract it from 100%. That's the percentage of your life you have left, give or take a bit. And keep in mind that, most likely, during the bulk of that time you won't be at your best. You may be drooling in a wheelchair. Or working in a cubicle. Or you could die early – that happens to a lot of people. Any regrets?

Not everyone gets to be as astronaut. Odds are, it won't be you. You're not good enough. Your life isn't perfect, and it's your fault. Bad things happen to people who can't overcome them.

And then that goddamn voice in the back of my head says, “Surprise! You're 17! And you're like everyone else!” And I wonder if brain damage would be so unpleasant after all.

And fundamentally, I am like everyone else, aren't I? I have the same goals, really, I want what everyone wants. A home, a girl, plenty of opportunities, all the education I want, a bit of money, a Pentium 4 3.20 GHz 800MHz FSB system with 2 GB RAM, a 200 GB hard drive, and a nice 54x32x54x CD-RW. Perhaps a bit geekier than some lives, but without the hardware it's the American Dream. Pretty much everyone can appreciate the appeal of this life - it's what we want. And anyone who can work hard, save their pennies, and follow the rules can get ahead here in the good ol' US of A.

Silly humans, we try and try to make ourselves noteworthy as individuals; we strive for the elusive “success” package by attaining knowledge, power, love, and money. But why do we strive for this besides material satisfaction and “happiness”, which nobody seems to be able to define? I think that the key to our desires is standing out. We want to be known, respected, and remembered, because we know that outside of the interactions we make with our fellow humans, our lives are meaningless. To truly achieve this, though, is to be better, in some facet of life, than everybody else, which of course only a select few people can actually do. More importantly, are they who will go down in history ever happier than everyone else?

I myself have dreams of grandeur; everybody daydreams about being famous or exceptional, about everyone respecting and caring about them. But when someone comes close to achieving these dreams, are they as a result happier than any average guy can be? An average man with an average family and an average home with average paychecks every average month can still feel good about himself and still be happy. So, yes, you can define your life by how many of your dreams and goals you accomplish, realizing that the basis of everyone’s dreams are different, but in reality it doesn’t matter if you do or you don’t. What would happen to the world, though, if everybody realized that their dreams and goals are pointless and somehow (though this is very unrealistic) managed to convince themselves not to strive for that goal of personal success? The world would stop working. Everyone would no longer work for anything but survival, and there would be no drive to do anything else. So yes, the striving is meaningless, but apparently necessary.

And yet (there is always an “and yet”), the reason for nearly all of humanities problems is the selfishness, arrogance, self-centeredness, and even ignorance that are all caused by the striving for success. Early in later humanity’s history, nations developed and were ruled by kings. These systems of governing proved to be horribly unfair and unjust, and so they have since been replaced. But why didn’t they work? I would have thought that whenever a man or woman would come to a place of power and responsibility that he or she would have to rise to the sense of duty and do all of the best things for his or her people. Those ruler’s must also realize that, in serving the people as a ruler to the best of his or her ability gives the people more incentive and ability to work harder and the economy to run smother, strengthening the nation, the government, and ultimately the ruler him or herself. But that was not the case, as in so many cases the rulers would become power-hungry and corrupt and fail to serve the people.

Is the United States’ brand of democracy of today all that much better? It is characterized by the “checks and balances” system, where different powers and responsibilities fall on different people, and no one man or woman holds all of the power. This government, though, seems to only be united in one thing; individual self-serving. Arguably, self-preservation is just as important as fulfilling individual responsibilities to the best of ones ability; such is the argument of corrupt individual members of government who make it their priority to earn lots of money for many of the things they do.

Yet there must be an underlying meaning for all that humanity tries to accomplish, or else we long since would have realized our own futility. Even the mere fact that people refuse to accept existentialism is proof enough that it lacks foundation, because as a mindset it permeates everyone’s actions. A philosophy preaching the futility of humanity would certainly stop everyone in their tracks if it were effective. If it were truly acceptable to all, a clear and strong reminder of just how pointless our lives are, then it would have caught on, and as a worldwide trend everyone would simply surrender to the futility of human activity. No one would ever bother to do anything, because it wouldn’t matter. But humanity has its own way of viewing things.

There are those people that subscribe to existentialism, that believe humanity is utterly pointless. And to an extent, they are right: the universe is a pretty damn big place, and we inhabit one measly little planet. But who is to say that small and unnoteworthy are equivalent to meaningless? Is it not true that every atom in a molecule is necessary to make it? Changing one molecule in a DNA strand makes the difference between humans and chimpanzees; might also the eradication of Earth hold some cosmic consequence?

But I’ll back up for a second here. The refutation of existentialism keeps this world running: if no one believed their actions had a purpose, no one would continue to perform them. This belief is necessary. And it may be possible, just maybe, that the purpose of humanity does not fit on a global or even a cosmic scale. Humanity is currently, after all, limited to one planet. Maybe this pointless hustle and bustle that keeps the world working IS the meaning of life. Maybe peoples' jobs, their occupations, their hobbies, and everything else that existentialists deem pointless really DO have a meaning. They are the drive that keeps people going, the cement that holds the bricks in place. To many people, after all, their occupations are a source of great enjoyment. They do what they do not only to be happy with their lives, but also to keep living them. And certainly this ongoing desire of humanity to do what they enjoy, be it their occupation or their hobby, must have a value beyond what goal it accomplishes within the depths of the cosmos. At least to the humans that currently reside on this planet, which unfortunately is the limit of our perspective.

Existentialism never made sense to me for those reasons. I’ve always made a point of believing that humanity has some purpose, even if it be only to survive. And the more people try to explain that humanity is pointless, the angrier I always get, because there’s no way to back it up. If humanity has no point, then you can’t prove there is a point. And if it is impossible to prove something’s existence beyond mere belief, then it is likewise impossible to prove its absence. Conversely, if humanity does have some greater purpose, we obviously don’t know it yet. And we may never know it. But you can’t prove or disprove something you don’t know; it’s infeasible. Either way the coin falls, there is no solution: regardless of whether humanity has a purpose, no one will be able to prove it either way.

The only solution to this problem is to assume the correctness of one or the other. Since neither can be proven, it’s six on one and half a dozen on the other. Really, it comes down to the fact that the purpose of humanity isn’t decided. It’s all a matter of opinion.

But whose opinion will solve the matter? Certainly not anyone's that I know of. Yet the people I discuss this with say that every question must, and always will, have only one completely unique and correct answer. So WHO WILL DECIDE? The answer: humanity already has. The choice: neither—humanity has chosen that neither solution is correct, and hence, some other solution must be reached, but apparently no one in this day and age can see beyond their own stuporous existence to the greater body of living proof—that LIFE STILL GOES ON. If life, in its infinite detail and complexity, really adds up to nothing, then life itself is unaware of its unneeded existence, in clear defiance of any manmade, superficial, nihilist philosophical viewpoint. The universe, as a nigh infinite and yet infinitesimal in detail place of wonder, is home to who knows what, and since no modern technique is available to study a nearly infinite place, such as the universe we inhabit, no simple conclusion of “nothing matters” can be reached.

This fact, in conjunction with the fact that not a single human being is capable of knowing everything there is to know at one point in time, forces the observation of: What else don't we know? This question leads down some very interesting paths: for instance, could God exist, and would he actually be a she, or would it be of neutral sex, holding no innate opinion of which gender is better or worse (I'm not making any suggestions here, I'm just asking a few questions). Would there have been a possibility for this supreme being to have a Son, in human form , with certain alien, supernatural powers? Would this lone immortal-turned-mortal be the gateway into paradise, that simple and everlasting faith in a God and a Son and a Holy Ghost would grant that person eternal life in some form or another? Would this eternal life, if in fact eternal and infinite, would it be a spiritual or physical immortality, or would it simply be a happy existence for a short time? Would this faith transcend all boundaries of time and space? What else transcends the boundaries of time and space? Could there be life out there that could do that? Could there be other life out there period? Would it be similar to life on Earth, or would it be completely different to such an extent the "life" as we define could not and would not apply—hence the term "alien.” Could this life already know of us, or have we already met them?

You see the dilemma in simply existing as a mere mortal on this supposedly puny planet in the middle of some side-galaxy with no real importance? Should humanity ever reach the stars, will it be able to survive with the questions it already has answered, or will humanity as a whole simply lose its essence, the loss of humanity by humanity itself? A disturbing question, which has no immediate answer—I can, however, speculate. Every so often, you hear of the occasional movie or TV series that brings up madness caused by the depths of the ocean or vastness of space. Now, while a certain amount of these people is certainly unavoidable, there is no guarantee that these few will be the cause for the loss of humanity by all. Or would these disturbing symptoms be "contagious," easily spread from person to person, similar to what happens in a mob—one person acts as the trigger, and the crowd is the gun. But certainly these anomalies, if you will, won't cause a nearly instantaneous breakdown of society, morality, and humanity (as in the traits associated with being humane)? Space is a far way off, and there is no way to tell.

All these questions point to the lack of knowledge, not the lack of understanding, in all of humanity, not just in a select few (such as ourselves, the people responsible for this argument). This lack forces every person not neglectful of their part in the whole to pursue knowledge—in the humanities, the sciences, and so on. Human drive—live with it, love it, learn to wield as a shield and as a sword—this is why humanity seeks answers…to satisfy its human, sometimes flawed, emotional, drive to know. Go out and learn.