Always With These Late Nights

Always with these late nights. I never get any sleep.


So topic of the evening (or morning, it is 2 am): Ethos

Ethos is essentially defined as character. A person's character is their essence, that which governs their actions, and subsequently, their lives and the lives of those around them. It's what makes a person make the decisions that they do, their moral compass and code of conduct. Morality shapes a person's life; without it, daily activity has no direction and is meaningless.

So why discuss Ethos? I'm sure you weren't wondering that question. I'm sure you were wondering, wes, why are you discussing anything, we don't want to read this! Well if you don't want to read, then go away. :)

So why discuss Ethos? Because as a speaker, scholar, philosopher, writer, and person, Ethos is the most important. Sadly, it is often the most overlooked; however, Ethos is what defines just about everything.

I'm speaking (writing) now of the Ethos of the Greek Philosophers, that stands in contrast to Logos and Pathos, the minds of Logic and Emotion. Ethos stands as the mind of credibility. What is interesting is that Ethos seems to not fit with the other two. However, judgments made on a person's Ethos are done almost immediately and without thought. To display poor Ethos is to alienate your audience from yourself and risk no longer being able to appeal to them. This is regarded as failure in public speaking, writing, and teaching.

So the goal of Ethos is to preserve one's credibility; to make one appear knowledgeable. Man (and Woman), being mortal, cannot perceive what the senses to not react to, and therefore, is incapable of adequately casting judgment upon any person. However, judgment is required for day to day survival, so some sort of judging in necessary. A person must judge others based on what they can perceive.

To preserve one's credibility, one must appear knowledgeable and trustworthy to peers. If the goal is to seem intellectual, then a large vocabulary is in order. If the goal is to seem down to earth, then a casual sentence structure and easy to comprehend speaking style is necessary. If the goal is to appear as a total jerk, profanity and race/sexism are effective. No matter the goal, however, the perception can be left up to the person.


So, at what point does preservation of appearances become unhealthy?

Because it definitely does.

I love to appear as "scholarly." However, especially in the beginning of classes, I will let this get in the way of being social, or even being generally kind. I am too busy looking smart and dignified to associate with the rest of the class. I hate this, but in order to appear scholarly and intelligent, I often feel the pressure to abstain from social interaction.

I feel like Ethos is the art of self-labeling. By preserving Ethos, we can make ourselves unapproachable or socially kind; lofty or idiotic. Whatever suits our purposes. I see why Plato would find Ethos the most important - nobody but a fool listens to someone who they don't believe. So we create our boxes for other people to see, and live in them. So long as we stay in the box, we are believable. And we create our own labels often, and then are trapped by them again. Irony (Fe).

More Late Night Frustration With God

So here's my problem.

Belief.

Can I choose to believe anything? The answer:

No.

There is no such thing as belief. Well, technically, because the human capacity for knowledge is so minimal, everything is belief. But a person believes something because they are shown that it is true.

Nobody purposely believes something they think is false, right?

And being asked to change belief is ridiculous. That's why "conversion" (oh, how I despise that word) never works very well; the converter must convince the convertee that what they are saying is true. I can no more choose to believe in god if everything I've learned says otherwise than you can choose to be buddhist from here on out, just because.

So if I can't choose what I believe, then it's based on what I see as truth. And what I see as truth is what I'm shown by the world and the people around me.

I have no desire to abandon god. Why would I? It's around the christian god that my entire upbringing was based, and upon which my morality orbits. Everything I think, say, and do is through the christian lens. But if every bit of information I receive is just more and more contrary information to what god claims, well, what am I supposed to do?




Also, faith. I'm not sure I understand faith. Is faith belief in something? Just straight belief: like I have faith that the sun will rise in the morning. If that's faith, then I have the same issue that I do with belief.

Is faith then, like the second definition according to dictionary.com, belief in something without proof? Even this I can swallow; honestly, there is no proof for anything anyways. I can have faith in god without proof.

My problem is here. Is faith belief in something, contrary to the proof provided? Is it a requirement of faith to SUSPEND ALL LOGIC AND INTELLECT for the something to make sense? That can't be right! There is absolutely no way that the god that created me as a questioning and deep thinking individual could ever ask me to give up what is my strength for him to be real. That is pathetic.


So you people who I talk to, when you say "have faith," what the hell does that mean? Does that mean, "hold on, god's coming to get you?" Well, I'm waiting. Or does it mean, "Stop questioning?" Cause in that case, keep your faith. I'm not interested.





I am doubting thomas. When my friends tell me, "jesus is alive," I say, I wont believe until I see the holes in his hands. There are many reasons for this.
- Perhaps I loved jesus the most out of any of you, and now he's gone, and I'm not willing to risk myself for such a huge, life crushing dissapointment.
- Maybe it's because I'm smart, and things like ressurection aren't to be taken lightly, let alone without question.
- It could be that I'm level headed, and watching out for my friends; imagine how heartbroken peter would be if he learned that jesus wasn't really back.
- Maybe I'm skeptical because of my experiences with these crazy apostles already so far. People tend to exaggerate or see what they want to see.

Or maybe I just don't like being lied to. It hurts a lot to get decieved, and I don't want it to happen. If jesus claimed to be god, and then was killed by mere man, and I SAW him die, then how could he come back? What if you're wrong? What if you're lying? It's foolish to say anything but show me your hands and feet.

But according to the bible, he did, didn't he? Jesus showed thomas his hands and his feet. The god of the new testament was not bound by thomas's doubt. So there is no reason he should be bound by my doubt now.

God, if you're there, then I am praying. I cannot believe until I see the holes in your hands. I can't see a reason why if you could show thomas, you can't show me. So I'm praying, as desperate as I've ever prayed, prove yourself to me. Make youself more than a story for me. I need it NOW, because I don't have any stamina to keep this indecisiveness up any longer.



~wes~

I am back

I am back from Lent now.

Lets start our return to the internet with bitter ramblings.




We all place our trust in something, all the time. When that trust is broken, conflict arises. Simple enough, right? Even teen trendy magazines get this: "Angelina Jolie Stabs Brad in the Back - Divorce Papers Being Processed NOW."

We all crave a place to put our trust. Not only do we crave it, we REQUIRE it, in order to function naturally. It's impossible to live without placing your trust somewhere. The problem arises when the vessel we endow with our trust is incapable or unwilling to fulfill our expectations of them.

For example, if I drive everywhere every day, I have trust in my car, that the motor will work and I will get to where I need to go. If my car breaks down, then I feel angry, betrayed. I know my car has no consciousness; however, I am angry, because I trusted my car to get me to work or school, and now I've been stranded. This betrayal can be redirected too, towards the mechanic with whom I have endowed an amount of trust on the functioning of my car, or to my family, who drove the car last and obviously forgot to put oil in it.

On the other hand, if I get in my car, knowing full well that the oil has been low for months, the tires are flat, and the battery is dead, and something goes wrong, while I still may feel angry, I don't feel as betrayed. The frustration I feel is different.


So that is that righteous angry, that feeling of betrayal we feel. It's because something we trusted didn't come through for us. However, as far as I know, every person has COMPLETELY unrealistic standards for the people that they trust. So it's a self-fulfilling prophesy, the process of trusting anything or anyone; everything fails everyone completely and utterly.

Where is a person to place their trust then? According to the bible, it's God. The unique thing about placing trust in an omnipotent and omnipresent being that is invisible is that a person can never quite tell when they are being failed. Say, for instance, that there were no God to place this trust in; it wouldn't matter, because if there were, that being knows all, and therefore is incapable of making mistakes. And the bible says that the christian God is one with our best interest at mind, so that means that any misery or seeming betrayal of trust is intentional, for our best interest.

However, an invisible being that makes no form of obvious contact poses a problem. Because there is no communication between God and man, man is incapable of knowing the intent behind occurrences. And because man can't know the intent, man also can't know whether his trust has been betrayed. The "working out" of a situation may be due to nothing more than positive thinking or random chance, or it maybe be due to the workings of God. Man has no way of knowing. A person who believes God pulls all strings is quick to believe that happiness is a blessing from God, and pain is a curse; however, beyond blind faith, there is no way to know what the operator behind those actions is.



Faith seems like a shortcut. I have faith that my car will start when I go outside (well, sometimes I do), because in the past, when I turn the key, my car starts. I've also seen many other cars start by turning a key. I don't need to have someone show me or explain exactly what is happening for me to believe it will work. Faith takes me from point A to point M without having to go to every point in the middle. But is it faith then?

Is faith believing or expecting something without any reasons whatsoever that it will occur? Because that is very contrary to anything I feel I can accept. Many times, when I explain that I have trouble believing in God, people tell me to have faith, and God will reveal himself. If the God they are talking about is the same God that the bible is talking about, all-powerful and all-knowing, He is not confined by my having faith or not, and therefore whether or not I have faith, He should be more than capable or revealing himself. It seems counter-intuitive to believe something for the sake of believing it in hopes that you'll believe it. I don't even think a person can choose when they believe.


So in that case, my conclusion is that faith and trust seem to be pretty closely tied, no person can shoulder the burden of another's trust without failing, people need an unfailing source for their trust, and placing trust in a non-responsive deity is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Alright, for next time, we'll talk about why that deity is non-responsive, i.e. my issues with prayer.


~wes~