This is another Facebook post from 6 years ago. I wouldn’t change much of anything, except maybe a few less “therefores”. I sound like I’m trying to impress people with my word choice, and it’s not a good look. (Maybe someday I’ll look back at this and think I’m trying to impress people with my self-deprecating comments. Dammed if you do, yadda yadda…)
Human life is inherently worthless; human experience is priceless.
That is to say, I don’t believe in free will. I believe in cause and effect. What happened yesterday dictated what I felt and did today as much as what happened when I was five did–as much as what happened when my dad was five, as much as what happened when the universe was born. It’s an unbroken chain of cause and effect and cause and effect, you see.
Therefore, just as the rocks on the beach are where they are because of forces out of their control, so am I here. So are all of us. Therefore we cannot say we are of any more value to the natural order of things than the rocks–or the plants or the planets or the stars or the rabbits or the fish. We are all one and the same. We’re all subject to time, to cause and effect, to entropy.
What is unique to us is our experience while we are here. That’s what matters.
Being happy and not causing unhappiness in others is the noblest pursuit. Indeed its the only change we can ever hope to bring about.
Like or lump it, it’s how I feel. (I can’t change your mind anyway. You’re only reacting how you were always going to.)
The Vulcan Buddha 