Dear Neil,
You show up for some “impress the prospectives” weekend.
You look around, nice trees, pretty grass; the philosophy teacher is nice.
You fill out some scholarship applications.
You smile when they come through.
You go ahead and sign whatever papers your parents shove under your nose.
You’re committed now: four years or bust.
“Graduation here I come!”

Worthless bullshit.

The preceding is known in writing circles as a “hook”. The point is to say something interesting and by doing so, “hook” your audience, grab their attention, make them so interested that they bother to read the whole article.

If I had a genie, I would wish for a time machine. I would then throw the genie’s lamp away, since a time machine is much better than a genie. A side from the ease of implementing get-rich-quick schemes, such as selling calculators to the American government during World War II, a time machine would still be a versatile solution for modern living.

When a story, article, or entry analyzes itself, it is said to be “post-modern”. The phrase “post-modern” seems absurd to some people, the first time they encounter it. Yet, the name is very logical. In the early twentieth-century, a few people thought that they lived on the cusp of a new, futuristic world. They thought technology would change the fundamentals of the human condition. This turned out not to be the case. At any rate, modernism is now in the past. We live in a post-modern world.

Question: What if all of history, past and future, is nothing more than spilt milk?

I don’t like to think of myself as a quitter. I like to think that I stick things out, no matter how rough. Like most self-perceptions, that is inaccurate. In the past, I stuck through things because I lacked the balls needed to get out of things.

It seems to me that people shouldn’t get too over-wrought about the afterlife. If there is a benevolent, omnipotent God, it seems He would ensure that when it’s all through, everyone would say, “Yeah, that’s exactly the best way for the universe to be.” If that means I need to be sent to hell for it all to balance out, I’m sure I deserve it. It seems silly that I should try to elbow my way into heaven, whether I should be there or not. Isn’t the whole point of Christianity that we need to get away from that kind of egoism? Even the most dyed in the wool Ayn Rand-ian would take Eucharist, if a voice from the clouds told them too. It’s just that right now, they think their best long-term self-gratifying plan is materialism, working hard, etc. Given evidence to the contrary, they’d shape up pretty quick. Christianity says forget what’s best for you. Just do good. Do good, since good is what should be done. If you get thrown to the lions-- well, that’s a shame, but everyone is gonna die someday. The important thing is you died trying to good. Heaven and redemption are just nice deus ex machina touches thrown in for the benefit of God’s elect.

“You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that--and shudder.” (James 2:19 NIV)

You really only ever need balls the first time you do something. After that you need less and less willpower to do something. The first time is balls, after that it’s just experience. ”I just can’t talk to that pretty girl sitting there!” Strangers in bars do it all the time. Just do it. It will only hurt once. It’s like a bee-sting. It’s like getting a shot…

I’m getting out of my English class. Dropping it. A big, four-credit whole in my fall semester has just opened up. I talked about dropping the class for a long time beforehand. Idle talk, really. “Boy, I oughta drop that lousy English class of mine!” It’s funny; parents take idle talk so seriously. It’s probably a function of how little contact they have with their kids.

If I had a time machine, there would be no need to drop my English class. My future self would have just told me what classes to take beforehand. He may even have sent me my ‘A’ papers from the future. Actually, they wouldn’t even need to be ‘A’ papers the first time. We could just turn in the paper, see what feedback is on it, then revise the paper and send it back to the past. After a couple loops, it would be perfect. My future self could make me study sheets for tests that he has already taken. My future self could tell me how to stand in the right place at the right time when a lucky accident occurs. ”Dear me, hang out by the lamp post at 9:15pm tonight. A pretty girl will drop her books. Say the following to her…”

Pleasure and pain are how evolution tells us what to do. “Eat fatty foods; winter is coming!” “Mate with as many people as possible; get those genes spread!” “Don’t work more than you must; you’ll get plenty of exercise chasing gazelle around!” Pleasure and pain are basically useless, in terms of advising us what we actually should do. Emotions are too.

My English professor told me that I was “a classic example of gifted child syndrome”. She went on to explain that my intellect was confounded by my laziness. Thus, my miserable grades in her class. This is true, I guess. I’m a pretty lazy guy. It has taken me days to get up the little bit of focus necessary to write this entry. It has been written in spurts.

I have an uncanny ability to accept the past as being immutable. Pretty much, as soon as something bad has happened, I’m over it. Especially, when I do something wrong. Punishment seems so silly. It can’t change the past. What’s the use? Prevention? Pishaw. We’re all being reborn each second. We’re born as someone new, someone, who would make a different decision in the same circumstances, due to having more life experiences. Of course, the person of the future chooses differently than the person of the past. But has their heart really changed?

Question: What if all of history, past and future, is nothing more than spilt milk?

Answer: There’d be no use crying over anything.

Right now, my grandfather is waiting for a heart attack that he has a fifty-fifty chance of surviving. He had a heart attack before, twenty-six years ago, right before my parents were married. He had to miss the ceremony. More recently, just after I started school, he had a mini-myocardial deal. He had some surgery. Then while I was home for fall break, he had more chest pain. So, now he’s waiting. They figure that he’ll probably have another heart attack, which will either kill him or heal him. How existential…

If I had a time machine, I could help Grandpa out. I could give him some nitroglycerin at just the right time. Of course, I’d have to wear some shiny metallic shirts, to prove I was from the future.

Why would someone with a heart full of egoism and self-interest want to go to heaven? Heaven isn’t the place of infinite happiness; it’s the place of infinite godliness. Who could stand to surrender their will so completely? The attempt is always to dilute the radical nature of the gospel’s message of total forgiveness by getting works or repentance involved. They say to do otherwise is to fall into the trap of “antinomianism”, that is condoning disregard of God’s moral law. By no means! Those who ignore God’s laws are not separated from forgiveness by their actions. They are separated from forgiveness by their own hardened heart. That’s the funny thing about humans, we come to hate that which we disregard and love that which we contemplate. Kinda like my English class.

I have done heard the tell from my folks, that Grandpa is fairly accepting of death. He’s made his peace with God. He’s ready for whatever the afterlife has to serve up. He has no regrets. Good for him.