Nihilists Have More Fun

Actually, as you can probably tell, I don't hate nihilists. That just seemed like a good click-bait title for a post about internalized prejudice. You've surely heard of the topic of internalized prejudices before, probably in the context of racism or sexism. As you've heard, just because you belong to a certain group of people is no guarantee that you will see that group positively. If you grow up in a society that portrays people with your skin color or your chromosomes (etc.) in a negative light, to some extent you're going to think that your group and you yourself are no good, just as you were taught. You might for instance feel with great certainty that, while it's acceptable and barely noticeable for other people to express their culture, their attractions, their beliefs, their gender, if you were to express yours, it would be too political, confrontational, or abrasive.  I know I have this sort of internalized disdain for my own beliefs, but it's so stron...

SPOILER ALERT - PLOT POINTS DISCUSSED  It's that special season that only comes one time each year: Tax Season! And what better way to celebrate the bureaucracy this April 15th than by hitting the theaters for a movie? Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert's Everything Everywhere All at Once is the most fun I've had to date watching a bickering couple get audited. In fact, despite the majority of the story taking place in a laundromat and an IRS building, it's more fun than some flicks set in more alluring locations. The Daniels do not disappoint when it comes to wackiness, and that's saying something when you're talking about using a story concept that's become overdone as quickly as the multiverse concept has. The way they poke fun at this sci-fi trope while simultaneously telling a powerful story about having to live in many worlds at once is beautiful! They combine the side-splittingly ridiculous with the deeply relatable in a fashion that leaves you thinkin...

I realized I had written a post about love and then about faith and so I thought well, I wasn't planning this, but why not finish out the trio? Unfortunately though, the only thing I have to say about hope is, there is no hope. Nope. There's no hope. Not in the way I heard the word used in the sayings that linked it to love and faith at least. I heard a lot about the virtues of faith, hope, and love in religious contexts, and while I still find faith and love to be vital to everyday life, I now think that the hope my religious upbringing offered is actually quite a dangerous thing, in addition to not being real. Hope in these contexts ultimately meant one thing: the hope of eternal life. This was a hope that could never be broken because it always looked towards something further ahead than your present circumstances. No matter how badly everything turned out for you, this hope would always remain because you could always tell yourself things would be better after you died. Spe...

- originally March 27, 2019 Oh my god, I'm on a blog. What am I doing here? How did I get here? I've tried to start a blog numerous times in the past. All attempts have failed. Perhaps this time will be different. Only time will tell. Perhaps I'll eventually run out of things to talk about and abandon this one as well. Perhaps not. I do think it's safe to say this blog won't end for the same reason the last one did. I really had a pretty good thing going on last time. The theme wasn't too restrictive. I came up with something somewhat interesting to write about every couple months or so. But I got distracted by an in-depth piece of writing on a religious topic that at the time was very important to me. I started to write so much about it that I decided to make a little website of it with sections for all the subtopics. As the writing time stretched into the months I kept thinking that when I was done with this site I could just go back to the blog, post ...