Finding truth and meaning in life

  The human mind loves to organize sensory input into symbolic form. The ancient human mind fell in lust with symbolism and languages developed. Languages helped humans to develop collective ways of thinking, mainly by communicating very clearly that people would die if they did not agree to one thing or another.

Now the web allows endless data packets of crap to travel back and forth between humans.

We do not know how our ancient ancestors did before there were highly developed languages. Without highly developed languages, how did humans ponder the meaning of truth or life? When did humans add pondering to dodging dinosaurs and making whoopee?

 

Pondering nature is fairly easy. We get sensory inputs. We create symbolic terms for things like freezing to death, agonizing pain, the trots, eclipses, sex and tasty foods. 

When there is no satisfying concept, we search for more facts and more inputs, repeating the processes until we either give up or settle on something religious.

Then we start building temples and making up lies about higher beings who think they can compete with God. God is exempt from this process because God was here first and set up the whole shebang. The Mayans were wrong, so pay some respect now!

Truth is the crown jewel of inquiry and symbolic concept. But humans also love to give each other red herrings and false leads. The traveler deviates from the direct path to the truth. In many cases, there is no path to the real truth. Sometimes, new pathways lead to unanticipated truths. 

 

The recent elections are an example of deviating from the truth. Red State humans use their Etch-A-Sketches and they shake them to get wrong answers for every right question.

''The only way to reduce the number of nuclear weapons is to use them.''

—Rush Limbaugh

Shake!

''You know what, evolution is a myth. Why aren't monkeys still evolving into humans?''

—Christine O'Donnell, during a 1998 appearance on Bill Maher's ''Politically Incorrect''

Shake!

''I just wish Katrina had only hit the United Nations building, nothing else, just had flooded them out, and I wouldn't have rescued them.''

—Bill O'Reilly, on his radio show, Sept. 14, 2005 

Source: The Right-Wing Nutjob Quote-O-Matic from About.com 

The Twinkie defense of popularity as truth     

Tens of thousands of words were recently written about Twinkies. But no one wrote about the even more delicious, creme filled chocolate cupcakes with the minimalist curlicues of icing on the tops! Better yet, what about those orange flavored suckers?

This is because journalism is no longer a quest for the truth. Journalism is now a quest for the largest audience. The truth is that the cupcakes always were better than the Twinkies, but Twinkies were more popular. 

Popularity became the truth of our love of Hostess products. Popularity has also become the meaning of life! 

 

Popular government and culture 

Popular government is a process of compromise, where opposing sides throw darts and spears at all kinds of ideas and people. The statement or person with the most darts and spears sticking out becomes the truth. This is not because the statement or person is true, but because they get hit by people with better aim.

The truth is constantly challenged when people show up at the same destination but by different routes. Popular culture works that way as the truth of life. Kanye West is both popular and unpopular, but is he true? We may never know, now that he is bumping it with a Kardashian, who most certainly is true. 

But what are Kardashians true about? We may never know because we dangled a participle and we all have so much to say about that entire clan. Bruce Jenner is a volcano of truth that is neither popular nor unpopular. This is because he was once a great Olympian, so he catches much slack. We don't screw with great Olympians, even when they admit to peeing in the pool. 

As a result, we have no answers about Kanye West or any Kardashian-like product. So we make up a religious thing about them and just say "Judge not, lest ye get rich and famous!"

Popular religion and war

Popularity can be used to get huge collectives of people to do huge things. Popular leaders convince others to believe in something, to organize into religions, to fight wars, to read this blog, to build communities or to buy things. 

The Rev. Al Sharpton, for example, spake a parable of truth: The Republicans had the blueberry pie all over their face! They ate the pie!

However, the Rev. Donald Trump spake a parable of bad hair and other people's money: He preaches doubts that President Obama was born in Kenya and did not graduate from college.  

Many believe that the Rev. Al speaks the truth and many believe that Donald Trump speaks the truth. However, blueberry pie and Rev. Al are vastly more popular than Donald Trump.

The result? Greedy, orange haired, blueberry pie eating Republicans must be the opposite of the truth!

The Rev Al blueberry pie parable

 

We are sold popularity, not the truth.  

Popularity is the true meaning of life. Test this the next time you plan to serve the perfect barbecued burgers and you run out of the good mustard. You know that your burgers will be false! Your burgers will be untruthful if you use that runny, cheap stuff. The untruthfulness of your burgers will ruin their popularity. No one will trust your burgers again! Your life will have no meaning.

Let us test this again! Death means the end of life. Life is popular. Death is not very popular at all. Life must be the truth because it is a lot more popular. 

But what is life? Life is whatever is popular at the time. Zombies are popular, so being undead becomes the life!

Judging from the hours spent getting high and enjoying movies, books and television shows about the undead who walk the Earth, Zombies are much more popular than the Republicans!

But how do we know that the Republicans are not the undead? Some questions have no answers, so we make up the answers. That is where belief plays into all of this. We believe that a lot of Republicans still walk, but that their political careers are dead.

The web sends the meaning of life to us in endless data packets of crap.

The truth and the meaning of life changes as soon as newly popular stuff is crammed into our attention-deficit minds. Various collectives decide the important truths: Who should win the playoffs? Are pink plastic shoes acceptable for a trip to Wal Mart? Is pizza superior to hamburgers? Are Cheetos food? Is soccer football, or is football soccer?

When a Nigerian goes online and gets Rickrolled, that Nigerian joins the new human collective conscious. For him, the new meaning of life is about a song that will not get out of his head.

Ooops. The author just Rickrolled herself in California, USA.

Bits of humanity are fractured from other bits of humanity. The fractured bits are bound together by data packets from Twitter, Facebook and Google. The web is the source of all knowledge and wisdom.

Endless data packets of crap are all that binds humanity together.

The Final Answer

So here is the final answer: The real truth and the real meaning of life are held very closely and privately inside of over seven billion separate and unique minds, many of which are high on one thing or another while surfing the web.

Be afraid. Be very afraid until something shiny comes along to distract you.