Deon Barnard

1. Meaning is a construct.

Life is full of meaning for individuals who create meaning in their life. Wealth, sex, friends, family, social causes, politics etc only have meaning to those who assign meaning to them. For one person ‘saving the Pandas’ is meaningful, to another it’s completely meaningless. For one person ‘family traditions’ are meaningful, to another they’re just meaningless time wasters. One man screams for the Stormers every weekend, another has no clue and doesn’t care. We all try share the ‘meaning’ we get out of things with everyone else but there are people who simply aren’t going to care and we need to get over it. Does that mean that nothing is meaningful? Not at all! Well… maybe to the universe at large, yes, everything is pretty meaningless, but we’d all be suicidal if we didn’t attach meaning to the arbitrary things of our lives. So go ahead and get passionate about things – it’s what makes life worth living. Sex, super heroes, crispy bacon, cigars, whiskey, children, vampires, guitars, costumes and hobbits are just a few things that have tons of meaning to me even if they mean all of nothing to you.

2. Friends are temporary but essential

Friends come and go. We make friends by investing time and effort into the kinds of people that meet a particular need in our lives at a particular time. The reality is that we are always changing ourselves. What we believe or enjoy or desire changes over time and so do our needs. As a result we find new people that are more enjoyable to be around and lose friends with whom we’ve lost what once connected us. Just go to a matric reunion 20 years later and you’ll see what I mean. So I figure we need to enjoy the friends we have now and not cry too much over the one’s we’ve lost.

3. People pick a social reputation

Everyone decides at some point how they want to be seen by the community at large. Some pick the ‘nice guy’ reputation and want to be seen as easy to get along with and lovable. Others pick the ‘fuck you’ reputation and want people to fear them until their trust is earned. Still others want to be seen as ‘crazy’ or ‘quirky’ or ‘mature’ or ‘fearless’ etc. We build and nurture these reputations and get quite offended when people don’t take them at face value. We even assign moral judgments to validate our choices like, “Being cautious and mature is BETTER than being spontaneous and fun loving” or vice versa. I have identified at least three reputations that I have adopted since childhood, and I have a good mind to test drive a few more, just for fun!

4. People are scared

People fear everything. They fear small creatures and large creatures. They fear the unknown. They fear pain, and death, and discomfort. They fear change. They fear confrontation and embarrassment and loss of reputation. There is almost nothing that is not feared by someone; and very few people who are not severely hindered by fear in their lives. I think this is sad. I often just sit and watch people going about their daily lives, and this one thing is clear to me – people would be so much more than they are if they weren’t scared. The problem with fear though is that it’s primal, and so it activates involuntarily as a defense mechanism. Our tools for dealing with fear are courage and rationality, traits that are still hard to find, even in 2011.

5. Life is a journey

There is a common misconception that “people out there” (everyone except yourself) are living “normal lives”; that everyone has a college or university degree; that everyone has medical, house, life and car insurance; that everyone knows what they want to do with their lives; that everyone is married with kids; that everyone goes to gym; that everyone wants an enormous salary; that everyone except you is happy and has what they need! More importantly, there is a perception that this is how it SHOULD be – that this is the definition of life; what it means to be a human. This might be the most deceptive illusion in western society. Of course, this is not how things are at all, and in fact the percentage of people in the world for which the above list is true is almost zero. Very few people know what they want to do with their lives. Very few people are in their career of choice. Very few people stay married for long and most people live in ‘dysfunctional’ families. We’re all so busy trying to be like someone who doesn’t exist, and even if they did we’d probably be uncomfortable in their lives. Every individual has their own peculiar path to walk. Every individual is working out what works for them in their own way. There is no ‘model’ or ‘right’ way to live. I think if we all understood this principle we could get on with ourselves a lot better and just enjoy the journey for what it is.

Thor; Loki; Odin; Zeus; Chronos; Prometheus; Atlas; Diana; Ares; Hades; Hercules; Isis, Osiris: these are all cool Marvel and DC comic superheroes (or villains) with powers that defy the laws of physics. Some fly or move really fast. Some have super strength or amazing combat abilities.

Although I love these comics and the characters I don’t for one minute believe they exist, or ever existed, and nor does anyone else any more… but that wasn’t always the case.

As recently as 300 AD people seriously worshipped Greek or Roman gods in temples and with prayers in the same way millions worship Jesus or Allah today. If you lived in ancient Egypt and did not believe in Ra you would have been seen as a heretic, or crazy – certainly misguided and ignorant. The same would be true for anyone living in Greece in 400 BC and not believing in Zeus etc. And yet, all these “gods”, once revered, and sacrificed to, and worshipped, and died for, have been relegated to cute comic book characters. Anyone today who claimed to still believe in the existence and deity of Hercules would be considered as much a fool as a member of the flat earth society.

How is it then that in the year 2011 billions of people still worship mythical man-made super heroes like Jesus, Krishna or Mohammed? How is it that we believe these beings are real, and all powerful, and control our lives? Is it not evident that they too will become, and are becoming, cute stories that need to be seen for what they really are? Are we supposed to believe that the best evidence the creator of all things could supply for his deity was to walk on water or turn it into wine? Really? That’s it? That makes someone God? Clearly that puts David Copperfield in as a serious contender for creator of the universe!

Already the convoluted Christian story is moving into the realm of comic fiction where it belongs. I’ve just downloaded a comic called Jesus vs. the Vampires, and although I haven’t read it yet I’m sure it’ll be great fun and that Jesus H. Christ will kick a few vampire asses, while walking on water and sipping a good vintage wine, like some sort of robed and bearded demon hunting Van Helsing character. The nativity scene with the wise men and sheep we see all over the place during Christmas is simply the Christian addition to the jumble of kitschy traditions we’ve borrowed from a bunch of ancient cultures we now call heathen.

We need to stand back from our little cultures and families and church communities and see the big picture – Isis, Zeus, Odin and Jesus are simply stories we used to give our lives meaning when we understood nothing about how the universe really worked. Look around you – I mean really look to see: people’s limbs are not growing back; people are not walking on water; gods are not interacting with the general populace. Pretending that it’s true doesn’t make it true. It never has. There never was an Odin. There never was a Hercules. There never was a Jehovah. If there is a God we know nothing at all about it, and it has no interest in our affairs at all, unless that interest is completely academic.

The world will evolve when we understand the difference between fiction and reality and we stop acting on directives issued in works of fiction. We don’t obey the words of Sauron or Gandalf, neither do we plead to Dr. Spock or Wonder Woman to affect our job interview or heal our child of a fever. Instead we prepare for our interview and give our child panado or antibiotics because these things are real and we understand why they work.

Ah, I see my download’s complete. Go Jesus! Do a Chuck Norris on that Vampire ass!! And since when do Vampires sparkle? Your holy shine will put an end to that rubbish! Woohoo, the two finger gesture of God and he turns into ash – yowzers! I hope there’s a Jesus vs. Green Lantern coming soon…