I didn’t do anything exciting yesterday, but I thought of things to write about and miracle of miracles I can remember a few of them. Let’s see if they can stick in my head long enough for me to write them down.
I did go shopping at Aldi yesterday and while out I did something, I think I shouldn’t do; I ate out. The bus drops me off by Popeye’s and I saw there was no line, so I took advantage to order their chicken sandwich. It’s not worth waiting on line for, not much is worth waiting on line for, but it is excellent and reasonably priced. That’s my soft spot when it comes to optional eating out. I can’t say I regret it. Today I’ll be making my own chicken for dinner. I just have to decide how to cook it. I think I’ll go big and make sweet garlic chicken. I prefer to do that with boneless breast filets, but I don’t have any in the house. It’s still my favorite way to make chicken. Even when I have things to write about, food is a priority. That’s an important part of being me.
Raise your hand if you know who my favorite musician that is a friend that I see often is. If you didn’t know that it’s Jean Rohe, then you need to go back and read back issues of Wise Madness; I’ve said it often enough. They key thing is that I have many friends that are musicians, people I’m close to, but Jean is so obviously great, that they don’t feel slighted. Yet, I have one close friend, a very close friend, who only dived into Jean’s recorded catalogue this week. The result? They’re amazed at how great Jean is, and amazed at how long it took them to take the dive. I don’t feel slighted that my friend didn’t start earlier. It’s not about my ego. It’s about being excited for my friend, that I got to experience vicariously, their joy of discovery. It’s why I so often share my love of things, whether it’s Jean or Popeye’s chicken sandwich, I want to make other people happy. I want other people to be happy. One more thing, I want greatness to be rewarded. I have a strong sense of justice.
This goes back to when I was a kid and it extends to really stupid things, things that have no feelings to be hurt. I felt bad that the Professor and Mary Ann were just grouped as “the rest” in the first season Gilligan’s Island theme song. I felt it a great injustice that Darren forbade Samantha to use her witchcraft to make her own life easier. Tony let Jeannie use magic to do the housework; why wouldn’t Darren? Why did Sam put up with her husband dictating to her? This was not proto-feminism on my part, just a sense of fair play. Of course, feminism and all equal rights are about fair play.
It gets stupider. I think it’s unfair we speak of the Anglo-Saxons, when Britain was invaded by the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes. Why don’t the Jutes ever get included? I just realized I was unfair as I never investigated if there is a link between the Jutes and the fiber/plant jute. There isn’t. Now you can rest easier. I could feel bad for the fiber as it’s the second most common plant fiber, but I suspect many people never heard of it.
Sometimes things just come together. I was thinking about my sense of justice and tonight on The Good Place, Chidi is supposed to come up with an equitable moral system for the afterlife. This is something I’ve been thinking about since I was a kid too. I don’t believe in an afterlife; I think it a silly notion, but I also don’t believe in the Samantha’s witchcraft and I spent time thinking about that. It’s the way my mind works.
The traditional Christian view of the afterlife is inherently unjust. The finite about of good or evil you do in your life results in an eternity, thus an infinite about of reward and punishment. The big flaw in this way of thinking is the idea of it being a system of reward and punishment. If it’s possible to put someone in The Good Place, call it Heaven or whatever else, why not just put everyone there? Why is there the need for judgment in the first place? The Good Place takes the position that doing something just to earn an afterlife reward earns you no points; so, it’s not about making people better. But even if you take the position that it’s to make people act better in this life, why? This life is a literal infinitesimal fraction of eternity. No matter how good or bad you were in life on earth it will go out in the wash when averaged over your eternal life.
Am I seeing Hitler should be granted eternal happiness? Why not? Who does it hurt? If he were free from pain and suffering mightn’t he become a better person? If someone has the power to grant us eternal life and eternal happiness, why not just throw in removing all desire to do evil? It’s not forcing people to do anything. Nobody would feel coerced. They would have no desire to hurt others. Why is this idea of constant judgment so integral to the value system of so many religions? Don’t we always ask for people to not judge us? Isn’t that considered desirable? Why should there be judgment in heaven?
It would be great if The Good Place came to the same conclusions. The show is imaginative enough that I am not ruling out that it will I won’t be disappointed if it doesn’t.
I like this edition of Wise Madness; it’s a nice peek of what goes on inside my head. That’s my platonic ideal. Remind me to write about Davy Crockett tomorrow.
Wise Madness 