the other day in class we looked up the etymology of the word 'happy'. the root word hap- originally meant chance, good fortune, or an unforeseen occurance.

today I decided to look up 'sad'. How ironic to find out it originates from the root word sated, meaning enough or sufficient.

How ironic pejorations and ameliorations can be. I remember learning that nice used to mean fool, and that naughty was once equivalent to evil. They were my favourite examples of the evolution of word meanings. I used to joke with a friend that it was possible to insult someone without their knowledge by calling them nice.

but sadness and satisfaction? The contrasting words bring up a strange thought: do we in a sense, sometimes seek sadness and misery? do we find satisfaction in feeling down? are we in turn, pleased that we are miserable creatures, do we take pleasure in moping about our pain and depressed states? it is a compelling question, especially since we so rarely try to escape from the ditches we dig for ourselves.

How far do we dig before the air gets too thick to breathe? Before we choke on our own breath?

blood donations, lamb pita, deep conversations, and the stressful rush to finish one's assignments before the clock strikes twelve. What a day. 

the list of books I bought today

I'm ridiculously giddy over the books I bought today. which inclusive of a Rm150 coupons, totaled up to RM250--which means yay, I only had to pay roughly a RM100. The history geek in me is happy.

Ancient Inventions.
Greek Fire, Poison Arrows, and Scorpion Bombs: Biological and chemical warfare in the ancient world
Art, A New History.
From Socrates to Sartre: The Philosophic Quest
The Philosophical Life
The Oxford History of Medieval Europe

not for light consumption.

In the following exist the presumption that there is a God and that he created Man, and my limited understanding of my own faith. You are warned, nonetheless.

you mentioned the Garden of Eden, and how to be created with the ability to sin is flawed. Inherited sin and so on.

And I realized I never questioned the assumption of inherited sin, perhaps because it is so ingrained in Catholicism. I never questioned man's ability to sin; by and large it was a fact of life for me because it is so prominent in our lives. I accepted that we could, and so that we must re-compensate for this. It is interesting to see how much I accept on fate. Bear in mind I an no means threatened nor defensive, but merely trying to expand my own understanding and organize my thoughts. I in no ways intend this to be a religious debate. I can't say or argue for or against Christianity in another point of view because I lack the knowledge to do so. My mom's side of the family is Catholic, and up until the last 10 to 5 years, not particularly devout. God fearing, church going people, but not ones to be particularly strict. But it was the world I was raised in, so to say. I wasn't baptized as a baby, on the contrary my dad believed that such a momentous choice as religion should be left to an age when you understood what you were getting into. And if you chose something else, or chose not to believe, so be it. He was Buddhist as is the rest of his side of the family. Like your average Catholic kid however, I went for Sunday classes even with the exception that had to sit out on Communion and Confirmation and occasionally went to the temple. When I was home schooled my Bible Studies books were Protestant in nature, so if I do jumble things up, do excuse me. I have a rather liberal view on religion too, so you might have to forgive that while you are at it. There are premises in Catholicism that I don't  particularly agree on, such as the how confession is necessary for all (rather selfishly for me, I like to think I can talk to God and ask for forgiveness directly without going through a channel) and like what you said, that non-Christians are condemned to a hellish after life (again, for selfish reasons). In trying to understand the second however, I am relearning it. Have I been told it often? Yes. But I haven't thought about it recently, and so never took the initiative to look it up in depth until now. As a kid, I remember my mom telling me that in the end we all stand by the gates of heaven are are judged by our actions, and that if there was leniency, it would be for the non-believers. Christians who knew the laws and still committed sin were more likely to be punished. And I am guessing this was much more easier than telling your kid that her dad and grandmother and friends were going to burn in a pit of fire. I remember her saying later on that Vatican II had changed this; I'm trying to find more information on this [found. read Edit]. Personally, I believe that a mere belief in Christ doesn't save you if your sins are without regret; similarly, a lack of belief because one chose not to believe or was never exposed to Jesus doesn't condemn a person, if they live a virtuous life and am sorry for the wrongs committed.

Edit: 1260 "Since Christ died for all, and since all men are in fact called to one and the same destiny, which is divine, we must hold that the Holy Spirit offers to all the possibility of being made partakers, in a way known to God, of the Paschal mystery."⁶³ Every man who is ignorant of the Gospel of Christ and of his Church, but seeks the truth and does the will of God in accordance with his understanding of it, can be saved. It may be supposed that such persons would have desired Baptism explicitly if they had known its necessity." (Vatican, 'Catechism for the Catholic Church') 


"Nor is God far distant from those who in shadows and images seek the unknown God, for it is He who gives to all men life and breath and all things, and as Saviour wills that all men be saved. Those also can attain to salvation who through no fault of their own do not know the Gospel of Christ or His Church, yet sincerely seek God and moved by grace strive by their deeds to do His will as it is known to them through the dictates of conscience. Nor does Divine Providence deny the helps necessary for salvation to those who, without blame on their part, have not yet arrived at an explicit knowledge of God and with His grace strive to live a good life. Whatever good or truth is found amongst them is looked upon by the Church as a preparation for the Gospel" (Vatican, 'Lumen Gentium')

The rites of Catholicism deal by and large with original sin, mortal sin, and venial sin. So here's the best I can summarize from what I have read. To the Catholic Church is goes as such: original sin is what we contracted, different from mortal and venial sin, which are those we commit. The burden of the act of eating the apple and giving into temptation belongs to Adam--that is his personal sin. Before, Adam and Eve were free from death (immortality), free from pain (impassibility), 'freedom for disordered desires' (integrity), and freedom from ignorance (knowledge of what was necessary for happiness). I can't find anything that says if they knew what evil was and choose behave in a goodly manner, nor the opposite. I read an article that suggest that it was the act of craving the apple, the sudden lust, pride and material want that filled Eve that was the catalyst.  This sudden entrance of feelings that were not present prior. In any case, Adam and Eve did fall into temptation and as such there was sin and death. If this is what you meant by paying for things inherited that we didn't do, yes. The Catholic idea is that we are wounded, not destroyed by sin, and thus (to put it crudely) salvageable. And the closest illustration I could find is this:
"Likewise, one can pass the effects of one’s sins through generations. Let’s say that someone is an alcoholic. His original choice to abuse alcohol could have disastrous effects on his family that can last for generations, including influencing his children and grandchildren to abuse alcohol. This is not because they are guilty of their father’s sin but because dependency on alcohol is the only way they learned to deal with problems. In that way one can say that the sin of the father has been passed down through generations. It is not the actual fault that is passed down but the consequences of the original sinful choice." (http://www.catholic.com)

So if you consider that we no longer live in Eden as punishment, yes. We are paying in that sense. Which I suppose what makes such a great tie in religiously and plot wise to the sacrifice of Jesus.

My thoughts on it are only half formed, but here they are, however contradictory. I think we would lose our sense of self if we lived in perfection. I never want to live in a Utopia, simply because if everything was good and happy I wouldn't know enough to appreciate it because I wouldn't have sadness to compare it to.  If all you ever knew was a world of good, a true Utopia, an Eden where you frolicked and cared not for consequences because there were none, then your actions wouldn't be truly good, but merely a reaction for not knowing anything else but sinless action. We wouldn't be making the choice to do good, it would also be as forced on us in ignorance. Because there is no option to do a wrong, to commit a sin. Instead we do the right thing because its the only option. Would we understand our own actions?

If I suddenly decided to snort cocaine, yes I want a slap in the head. It would be wrong to stand and not do something. But you have removed the choice from me to decide. The intent however would still be there, because I didn't make the executive decision to not snort cocaine; what's to say I wouldn't attempt it later?
Don't we learn from our mistakes more so than when we get something right? Say I tried to learn how to swing a bat. At the very least we can eliminate what we did wrong, the wrong moves I made. But if I did hit the ball, how do I repeat the action? how do I determine what exactly I did right to repeat the action again?

We are on a constant pursuit for perfection in all its glory. We ourselves display perfectionist traits, because perhaps we find ourselves lacking in it. There's this hollowness, the void we need to fill with outward perfection. If we were able to create beings, we would try to create them in such a way that they would be perfect. We wouldn't want our creations to carry flaws. I don't know how true this is for others, but for me personally, my mistakes often turn out for the best. A wrong brush stroke turns the dull into something else all together.

by the way: Abraham's Bosom. 

blank pages. pages ans pages of nothing. there's so much that i want to write, but find myself hesitating.

it's easier to sleep my day away than to open my eyes and face the loneliness of my reality.

Note to self: never lie to yourself and think that perfection is an achievable state. Nothing truly can be; its hard enough to match one's own ideals, but to do so also in the eyes of others? Should this even be the measure for perfection? Admiration of others? It would be a chase in which you would lose your very sense of self. I'm trying very hard to remember this---that a perfect state does not exist in the mortal realm.

Do we all go through stages of disillusion? do we all feel the need to rip apart the seams of our own worlds, to test our own boundaries, until at the very end there is only the core of who we are?

On an entirely different note, I started thinking about The Little Prince again.

"One day," you said to me, "I saw the sunset forty-four times!"

And a little later you added: "You know--one loves the sunset, when one is so sad . . ."

"Were you so sad, then?" I asked, "on the day of the forty-four sunsets?"

But the little prince made no reply.

metathinking.

Is it possible to get so caught up in thought, in general, abstract terms that one forgets distinct incidents that otherwise contradict the basis of one's belief? I wonder if I have been so absorbed in finding something to blanket all that I know to justify the action's of other's in my mind; rolling around in philosophical ideas of human behaviour so I can sleep better at night 'knowing' to some extent that there is so grain of goodness in us all. In actuality am I trying to justify things I can't possibly understand?

A revision of my thought processes is necessary. Perhaps it would be better to say we have the capacity, the predisposition for goodness, and thus, for what society terms as 'wickedness/evilness' as well. Its even vaguer than before. I'm at square one. I need more reading material on this.

Say we learn most of what we believe to be right and just from Society and Culture; we might disagree with certain principles, but society and culture lay the foundation for our preconceptions of what behaviour and actions are good. While that allows for the rationalization and questioning of these learnt 'laws', where does it leave the rest of us who don't question? Who don't demand answers?

So does Society and Culture demand that we do not kill a fellow human being? In most cultures, yes. Not every, but most. But the idea that we might not form this consciousness, this superego as Freud would term it, unless the cultural context in which we live in provides us with these laws is rather daunting. The lack of thinking and reasoning of why we do what we do leaves a Deterministic tone--without thought, are we at the whim of our upbringing? Or do we innately know the value of human life? Yet there is slavery, genocides, cannibalism. Do they not show a disrespect for human life? If there is a biological part of us that knows it is wrong to take another human life unless it is out of self defense, how would one explain the aforementioned trio?

 Let us put aside those who suffer from sociopathic disorders, schizophrenia or what have you. In a less gruesome example, if Society and Culture made it alright to lie, would we actually believe it to be wrong?

A bit of a rant I suppose. I'm watching The Pianist, and am greatly affected by the movie, even knowing roughly some of the reasoning the Nazis had. There has to be a reason such a mass of people behaved the way they did---did they all do it with no nagging guilt eating at their hearts? I don't believe that. Not every one of them, at least. And what of Stalin's regime? In any case, I'll post a revision of sorts of this post in the morning when I can think straight. Sleep deprivation does wonders to the brain.