I’ve been thinking lately.
About everything. About nothing. About some things.
A lot of conscious beings think about everything around them. Many will take their observations and turn them into absolutes. After all, there are some absolutes that all beings must follow. A being must be born, must consume matter to convert energy into various forms and then eventually die. That is an absolute for most beings. But not everything is an absolute. And believing so is potentially harmful.
You see, I have a theory. My theory is that the average mortal should avoid dealing with absolutes. Not all absolutes. We should avoid the everything and the nothing. We should embrace the something.
This idea came to me as I watched a movie.I don’t normally watch movies but I was looking after some of my sister in law’s kids. Anyway, in it was a city, an almost clockwork city of attempted perfection. Almost every day, its denizens sang together, screaming that “everything” was “awesome”. When in fact everything clearly was not awesome. Its citizens were basically robots, devoid of true pleasure, any dissidents mocked, ignored or even exiled.
I thought to myself, with that absolute, they were lying to themselves and hiding their problems.
I left that thought there for a while. I left it to… fester a little.
But the thought returned to me as I travelled elsewhere. I have duties I must fulfil. One such duty involved the observations of a war. A war caused by absolutes. In this case, the absolute was the belief that individuals may or may not have the right to believe in a specific deity. One side believed that an individual may believe in multiple gods. The other believed there was only one god and all others were null and void.
The conflict ended with the deaths of the majority of the former group.
I admit my examples are a little extreme. On the one hand I am talking about a fantasy world, in the other I discuss the damage caused by religious beliefs, ending in genocide. But the principle is the same. Everything and Nothing are dangerous.
In truth, they are lies. There is no such thing as truly everything, there is no such thing as pure nothingness. But they are all-encompassing concepts that the majority of beings understand and cling to. They become pillars of society.
Perhaps wrongly so.
Let’s take a look at an example. Murder. I’m sure we can all agree that killing is wrong, yes? Perhaps not. Many readers might consider a scenario where you have to kill. You are attacked in your home and have no choice but to open fire on your attacker. You might be travelling and accidentally hit an animal, leaving it bloodied but not dead. In those two scenarios, killing might be the better thing to do?
Or what about executing a criminal? Some might agree that is fair. A murderer will just kill more, so one must kill them to protect future victims.
In fact, some might feel that killing is acceptable, only because one’s opinions and beliefs are different. Wars over beliefs are common across the universe.
But the all or nothing thoughts are not restricted to murder. Many rights are subject to this as well. The right to a trial. The right to be punished fairly. The right to vote. The right to continue or not continue a pregnancy. The right to fight or run. The right to leave one’s home and move to new lands. Many of these subjects are looked at in an all or nothing manner.
After all, how can one judge that all pregnancies should be forced to birth, or forced to be terminated for that matter? How can one judge that all travels, visits and migrations into a kingdom must be banned? No, compromises should be made.
My theory is simple. Many things are varied. There is something behind every thought, opinion and action. While many will scream about everything and nothing, going to the far extremes of a scenario, I simply believe that we must look at things separately. One at a time if need be. Compromise is the answer, but so is studying each issue on a case by case basis.
Lumping all things into one, throwing all scenarios into a box and blindly accepting or rejecting them is what causes us to fracture and separate. If we are to be whole, we must look at as many angles as we can.
I suppose that is easy to say, sitting here comfortably on my perch, watching time spin by. But even if some beings consider opening their minds to compromise, looking at the universe piece by piece, I believe this universe will be better for it.