Superpowers

I must apologise for the lack of posting so far this year. My new job has been drainning my time, typical really, I went from being stuck in bored all day to not having enough time to myself!

I am a big comic book fan and so often I end up discussing with my friends what superpowers they would want and why. I'm finding more and more, as a result of this, that people's choice of power fits very much with their deep seeded life philosophies or how they feel about life.

For example some want strength, because they feel weak in life, or they want to protect others. Some want invisibility because they feel pressured and just want to disappear. Others, time travel to reverse things that have happened.

Ask yourself what power you would have. Try not to choose one on the basis of your liking a character, say you like Wolverine and so want the claws (which by the way, isn’t actually his 'power') or you think Cyclops’s eye beam is cool. I mean purely for yourself, you may learn a little about your personality and see deeper into your own soul.

As for me, I would go with the power to create duplicates of myself. The main character in existence who does this is Multiple Man from the X-Factor franchise. Now don't get me wrong here, I don't want that power because I like Multiple Man, I like Multiple Man because he has that power. The power, although in a slightly different form, also exists in a book called Kiln People (which I highly recommend by the way).

The reason I want this power is seeded into quite possibly the deepest part of my soul. A philosophical premise that fuels my entire life, everything I do, every decision I make. All are based on this premise.

Living a full life.

It is only recently I have become Christian. I spent most of my time as an Agnostic and this lead me to think, "Well, if God does or does not exist is not going to make itself clear to me soon" so I felt I needed to make sure I lived a full life to be on the safe side.

I soon found when exploring this that what may sound like a relatively easy concept really is not.

I thought that living a full life would be like a checklist, you simply move to the next thing on the list and cross it off, so when the list is done you can die happy knowing that you have lived a full life. I have quickly discovered that this is not the case.

You can spend your entire life just trying to tick off the first item, because once you explore what could be a simple thing on your list soon splits into more sub lists with options. I hate options.

Options make this difficult. Especially if by taking one path you close off the other and cannot then explore it.

Some would say the thing to do is to take a path and follow it to it's end and as long as you reach the end you have lived a full life according to that path. This is really the only realistic way of accomplishing this. Even choosing a few paths to become a well rounded individual would leave me wondering if I chose the right combinations.

This is not good enough for me, so over the past few years, more recently in particular I have taken to exploring as many paths as possible side by side, making sure I actively find the one best for me to follow rather than just blindly following the path immediately apparent.

Doing this has lead to some good accomplishments and discoveries, but equally some terrible issues and realisations.

Multiple Man in the comic sends duplicates off to live every path of life, he gets all the memories and experiences so to me that power is the only one that can guarantee living a full life, as it would be the only way to live every life to the end game.

I have tried to do this to the best to my ability. I do actually believe that as far as a normal mortal human being can manage I am achieving this. I have many circles of friends, most of which are completely different from each other and are even polar opposites.

This way of life has been problematic especially when the different groups intermix and do not see eye to eye.

The trouble I am finding now by living so many walks of life at the same time is it has devalued each of these paths in turn, making none of them more appealing than any of the others as a permanent path to take. Hedonism, Religion, Normal, Nerd, Sporty, Lazy... each has pros and cons which when I now weight them up leaves me stuck in the middle with none being an obvious choice.

I wish I could have the confidence of so many people from all these different walks of life who know that their path is the one they want. I expect I will always doubt whatever path I take.

DFTBA

Animals and the soul

I regularly have arguments with people over the assumption that religious establishments make over the soul and animals.

The church states that only man has a soul and animals do not. I firmly do not believe this for several reasons. The first question we must raise here is what actually is the soul? Many people whom I have asked say it is what gives us life and what gives us personality. We say things like "He has a kind soul" or even "She has a dark soul"

This is merely describing personality. In which case animals too must have a soul as animals often display personality traits. My own cats are a prime example. Tai is very timid and jumpy, where as Rio is aggressive and violent. My previous cat Zero was laid back and relaxed. Three completely different personality traits. Some people may say this is just the animal's instinct. If this was the case however then all animals would do the same thing, there would not be as much variety as there is.

Some people liken consciousness itself to the soul. Well animals are conscious beings so they too must have a soul. Often it brought up that their self awareness is not the same as ours, or their moral integrity. This is true but not soul related. This is merely to do with brain size, Chimps have self awareness so does this mean they too have a soul and no other animal does?

The size of the brain allows more cognitive thought so gives the ability for self awareness. Does this then mean that the soul is dependent on brain size? This certainly is not what religion would have us believe.

My other problem with animals and the soul is then at what point on the evolutionary scale does the soul magically enter?

The evolution of man (Google images)

At what point on this scale does the God give man the soul? We have no way really of knowing, self awareness certainly becomes a factor early on in the scale, does that mean the soul is entered there? At what point then are we God's design?

Several people I have spoken too simply disregard this question as "Not being important" but to me it risks the entire theory of the soul and could undermine all of religion itself. 

Here we have a video of two foxes playing on a trampoline, to me they seem to be playing in the exact way children would, the only difference is the species.

Is it mans vanity that is the true creator of the soul?

DFTBA

Entering the world of Blogging

I'll be honest with you.

I have no idea how to Blog!

The reason I have set up this account is because of my desire to get into broadcasting. I left six form with very little idea of what I wanted to do for a career but I did know the only subject I was good at really was Philosophy and R.S.

Naturally I decided to follow up this cause and went to University to study this subject. Since I still was not specific as to which part of this broad topic I liked the most I took a very long named honours course in Philosophy and Ethics combined with Theology and Religious Studies. (Saying that out loud always leaves me breathless)

I enjoyed my course, made lots of good friends and enjoyed the many pleasures of student life.

More importantly I discovered something else I was particularly good at: Radio.

I'll admit I sucked big time when I first started, but soon I had developed a calm and relaxed presenting style and became very good at driving the desk as well. My first programme was called the 'That's Debatable' show and as the name suggests was a debate programme. My aim was to have regular debates on Philosophy, Politics, Ethics and anything else that could be debated.

I'll admit this didn’t go quite according to plan as these kind of programmes take a lot of time to prepare, so it became more of an interview program where I would choose a topic area and interview a guest about it. This worked well though.

After two years I was promoted to Assistant Manager so it became my duty to train the new recruits and help them prepare their shows. I even produced and drove the desk for my friend's programme on conservation.

Unfortunately with this being Student Radio I was faced with an issue when I graduated. I now had to find a way to enter the real world of Broadcasting. Alas in the current economic climate this is not easy, so various sources have encouraged me to begin this blog.

Let’s see how this goes!

DFTBA