Apparently I Wrote a Joshua Graham Thing That People Liked

On the 30th of september, two thousand and twenty-one years after the birth of a fella went by the name of Jesus Christ, I wrote a comment on a YouTube video about Joshua Graham, a video simply titled after Joshua's famous quote – In the end, there is light in the darkness. The video clocks in at a brief but powerful one minute and thirty-eight seconds, and it consists of various aesthetically-pleasing images from various sources, such as Cowboy Bebop, Ghost in the Shell, and a few others I don't exactly recognize, all shown along the tune of spliced dialogue lines from Joshua Graham, all in honor and remembrance of the filmmaker's sister sometime after her untimely death. It is my understanding that the filmmaker made the video for very personal purposes, expecting to reach a whopping ten views, five likes, and one comment, but somehow it instead reached, at the time of writing, over three million views. I suppose that's just the internet, and that's just the game, and that's just Joshua Graham. But what in the goddamn did I write, and what in the goddamn am I gonna write now about what I wrote then? Well, what I wrote was this,

As you can imagine, and hopefully see, my comment was in line with Joshua's speeches, which resonated with so many people, so I guess my comment did as well, with me even getting recognized in a comment under a fairly different video by someone showing some appreciation, and also with the comment even appearing on a video about the psychology of Joshua Graham made by a fella called Max Derrat. Regardless, I did find it surprising to have such a positive reaction, with people praising me and my words. Now I could make a joke about arrogance that would do little more than masking actual arrogance, but in all honesty the positive reaction, like most positive reactions I've had in my life, just made me feel like a scam artist. Hearing people mention I've done something right just makes me doubt it all, it makes me think I've made a huge mistake and, until the inevitable day comes when someone else corrects me, I would have misled a ton of people. So the reaction just made me wanna delete the whole thing and then run away and hide, leaving no trace that I was ever there, like a true scam artist.

Unfortunately that might not be possible, since some archiving appears to have occurred, with some people saying they took a screenshot of my comment, and one other person quoting my words along with my very name. In that moment I admit I felt euphoric, not because of some phony god's blessing but because I thought it was neat that I made some people happy... The reason may be that the whole situation is a tad emotional, but the reason for that I'd say is all about meaning and purpose. Because that's the thing I came to realize a few years ago about atheism, and the thing I struggle the most to get across to others, and to overcome within myself. It's not a matter of obeying sky daddy, or going to a heavenly hotel after you die, or having a set of rules to follow so that you don't have to go through the trouble of coming up with rules yourself. At the end of the day the main difference between God and no God is that the existence of sky daddy means that your own existence was never random to begin with, and your death won't be pointless. Granted even within religion there would be some philosophical difficulties with this, but with atheism it's clear-cut that there is indeed a problem. In other words, the point of christianity isn't to say that it will bring you a lot of good things, like non-stop hugs and kisses. The point is instead to say that when you reach the end it won't be for nothing. In part because there will be no end, and in part because all of your suffering is witnessed by God. In that you are never alone, you have never been alone, and you never will be alone. If a man suffers in the yellow wood and there's no one there to hear, then does the suffering even matter?...

Whereas within atheism you need to ask, is it all for nothing or not? It depends. Some atheists argue that some things have value in and of themselves. It's not about doing A in order to achieve B to then obtain C and so on. Sometimes it's just doing something for the sake of that something. And I can sympathize with that view, it rather reminds me of the protagonist of the greatest manga ever made when he realizes that he should live and fight and swing his sword for his own sake. That's all fine, sure, but it assumes something very important, it assumes that your life is currently steady enough that you can focus on trying to find such a purpose. But what about when it isn't? What about when you're being burned alive and thrown off the Grand Canyon? What about when you're being pursued and tortured by nightmare-inducing monsters? What then? Do you still openly proclaim that you have found such a powerful subjective meaning in life, and a subjective but nonetheless very strong purpose in struggling? Or can you only do so from within the comfort of your own home, and from behind your computer screen? I suppose that's one for the philosophers, not for me.

As I reread the thing and reached the second paragraph I came up with a little scenario. If you're an atheist who's rather confident that godless existence is beautiful because it's free and because you can confidently find meaning and purpose in your own life then this one is for you...

Let's say you're walking down the street and you're approached by a witch. This witch can tell your future with flawless accuracy, and your future is inevitable, you're chained to it. And your future is that at some point you'll be kidnapped and find yourself in Italy, in a house of torture where you'll be kept for a hundred and twenty days. At the end of those hundred and twenty days you'll be killed... Now, knowing this, would you still carry on and maintain that same confidence? Or would you ask the witch for the date of the kidnapping so you could ace yourself before that? I think for the christian, and the muslim as well, as difficult as it is, he can always carry on. He can feel cheated, he can stumble in his faith, but if he holds on to it then he can default to the classic cliché that God works in mysterious ways, and he can still truly believe that when those hundred and twenty days are up he'll go to heaven. Maybe it's a little thin but it's something. But what about for the atheist? Why isn't death and non-existence better at that point? Why isn't it better to wish you had never even been born? Why would you endure a hundred and twenty days of suffering if the end goal is the same either way?

I say this because my belief, which is a belief that I suppose led a lot of people who liked my comment to think I'm a christian, is that without God suffering doesn't matter. This is the bit most people criticize about my position, and I understand why but I find most criticisms of it to be strictly psychological, not philosophical. Because psychologically speaking we can't stand the idea that suffering doesn't matter because to us it does. Very few people act truly careless about suffering in the world, and fewer still are capable of witnessing suffering with their own eyes and ignore it. So it's not that people don't care, because people do care, and suffering does matter. But it's a trick, isn't it? The suffering of person A matters because of person B which matters because of person C and so on, ad infinitum. But wait... it's not that infinite, is it? Because people aren't infinite. The cold facts are that if this rock is all there is then when you die you die, and when you're forgotten then you really die, and when all of humanity dies then nothing that ever took place here will have mattered at all. A day will come when there will be no more human life, and not even a shred of evidence that human life ever existed... Subjective meaning, subjective purpose, subjective morality, subjective whatevers, they all cease to exist when no more subjects exist.

At this point modern atheists often criticize the argument by saying something along the lines of – Fine, but how does a God who bans bacon and cloth-mixing plan to solve all that? It's a bit flippant, and I myself am being flippant in anticipation, but regardless, the point is not so much related to the day-to-day applications of religion, it's more about having something or someone who exists truly independently, for itself and by itself, something or someone whose sheer existence creates and maintains the existence of everything else. Otherwise all that exists is contingent, and the value of everything is contingent on the value of something else. If God doesn't exist to be the ultimate cosmic judge of things then the value of your whole existence is like the value of those ten dollars in your pocket. Maybe it's worth a little, maybe it's worth a lot, but its worth is entirely dependent on the economy around you. When that economy goes so does all your value, and your meaning, and your purpose. Godless life is a constant arithmetic whereby if you're plus then live, but if you're minus... I dunno, you tell me.

So it is what it is, as I'm so fond of saying... But this time to prove this point I can bring in some serious firepower, written by a fella goes by the name of Jesse Scott Gunn, who replied to my original comment and left a little something that went mostly unnoticed, even by me, I'm ashamed to say. But having noticed it now I hereby steal it, and share it with you now as follows,

And so there it is. The existence, value, meaning and purpose of Jesse's words, immortalized in this here blog. At least until the blog ceases to exist, and I cease to exist, and all of us cease to exist. Until then I don't know... But I do know that either there's meaning or no meaning, either there's purpose or no purpose, either it all matters in the end or it doesn't. There is no middle ground. To think there is strikes me as one of those moments where either I'm missing something so obvious that all the happy wanderers out there understand so completely, or the reason they're happy wanderers is precisely because their happiness gives them a narrow view... As for me I don't know much, except maybe that in some moments, even with all my nihilism, I'm almost reminded of how something is so much bigger than nothing.

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Paulo Seabra

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