Ramblings From Justin Penney

By the book I would be considered mentally ill. I've had diagnosed clinical depression since I was 8 years old. I have panic attacks. I have night terrors. I have nights that I am completely sure that if I fall asleep I will die. I have feelings of deja vu that make me dramatically alter my response so I don't die. I constantly need reassured that people exist outside of my mind and that there is something substantial in the world.

Having felt this, in a manner so deep that it is hard to put in to words that would describe the absolute horror that I sometimes feel, I know that our brains can lie to us. And be very fucking convincing.

From therapy, and my own determination to be in control of my own life, I have developed a pretty acute filter for bull shit. I understand how a simple thing, like a phrase uttered by a stranger, can set a mind in motion over and infinite number of circumstances. That mind can then communicate to the body that the heart needs to speed. It can kick in the adrenal glands that scream , "RUN!" And your body complies. In reality, you've never met this person and they used a common euphemism for a banal part of their existence. There was never a stimulus yet you lost control of your body.

I get it.

This "skill" (meaning terrible curse) allows me to view people through a different lens. I know how you can lie to yourself. I know how convincing your own mind can be once it is set on a course of belief. This is also why I am strongly against the mix of religion and politics.

Belief can lie. You can truly convince yourself that sky is green, dinosaurs didn't exist, and the earth is flat. Give me 10 minutes alone and I could probably make these things my core belief ... however ... they are false. We can see that. We used our gigantic brains, we worked together as humans, and we observed. We took an action and we observed it. Wash, rinse, repeat.

I poke fun at the "religious atheists" at work. I ridicule the religious zealots too. I am agnostic, coward or not, and believe what I see. But, I have an imagination. I know that imagination let's human see and create all sorts of new things and without it we would be running down prey in a barren environment. I don't believe, or disbelieve in God ... or a god ... or in reincarnation. Maybe those things exist and we just haven't figured out how to see or measure them. I do believe that lights is altered by gasses in the atmosphere and the shift in wavelength turns the sky blue, dinosaur bones are old ... and cool as shit, and you can fly around, emphasis on round, the world. I can see this. We can devise ways in which to measure it.

To take a quick jab at religious zealotry ... Adam and Eve at from the tree of knowledge. That "cursed" us with a brain ... intelligence. ... perception. We can use that skill, the one which Jesus was ultimately killed for, and ovbserve, understand, and worship what is ... or we can deny it, read meaning where there isn't any, and start to devolve into the animals we were before the crisp, red apple caught the eye of Eve.

# posted by Justin @ 11:48 PM