Troll’s Weird Ideas

Who are we? Why are we here?
What the heck is going on here?
What is this stuff?

My answers to these questions tend toward a Toaist-Quantum Physics mishmash.

The extremely short version: “I’m God. So are you” ….. Now What … or maybe … ‘So What’?”

One part of the extremly long version would be my 60-page Senior Essay from St. John’s, which is
about the strange immaterial nature of material existence.

Religion

Some people, used to the philosophical framework of religion might ask, do I believe in God?… Yes and No, More or Less… I DO NOT believe in God in the sense that I think most people mean it when they use that word, with the usual baggage that comes with the term. I have had experiences which I believe indicate things about the nature of the universe, which might correspond to what some people call “God”. I am willing in some circumstances to refer to this concept as “god”, as a starting ground for discussion. In other words, I probably believe in something that you might call “God”, but I probably disagree with you about what it is, because of the inaccuracies inherent in the word.

Do I “have faith” in this “god”? Not in the sense that most people mean “faith”, which seems to me a belief in something for which you have neither empirical evidence nor any logical way of deriving it from other empirical evidence. I DO however, believe some things that can sound pretty outlandish to some people, and for which I could never produce a proof to others. The difference, I feel, is that these beliefs spring from things I have experienced, internally, mentally, spiritually, and it doesn’t matter to me if anyone else believes them. I have “empirically” experienced them, but others may not have. They may, in effect, be “true” only for me, and I’m OK with that… although I always enjoy finding resonance and similarity in other’s experiences.

Nor do I have “faith” that “everything will turn out all right”, or that the terrible things that happen are part of “god’s plan”, so that they are somehow not really horrible. The universe is sublimely apathetic about our fates. That said, there is also no “wrong” way for things to turn out, either. You can either feel bad about it, or roll with the punches and laugh. I try to laugh. If I really thought the horrible things that happen are part of “gods plan”, I’d find that very depressing.

I’ve got no time to waste on the mountains of dogma and very specific beliefs piled up by organized religions. There is nothing in them of value that cannot be gotten from simply opening your eyes and looking around at the world and your fellow humans with an open mind and an open heart. The rest is just a source of confusion and strife between differing factions of “believers”.

The One True Faith ;^)

As close as I come to religion is my admittedly unreasonable
conviction that MicroSoft Windows sucks, and that Linux, BSD and Mac OSX rule!
Don’t try to debate me on it, I’ll just froth at the mouth….

Miscellaneous Weird Ideas

Mike, an alert reader pointed out the following omission from this site: “I was just checking out the Philosophy section at Trollcave.com and thought there is a glaring omission. Here in Amherst we refer often to Troll’s Law of Determinist Animism (1980), which holds that:

“If you kick a rock while walking it is because the rock exerts a mental force on you to do so because it (the rock) wishes at that moment to travel along to visit another rock.”

This concept percolated from the depths of my mind with lots of help from Mike, Jeff, Tim, and Larry (all fully certified Wise Guys) and others, so don’t give me all the blame… er.. credit… The idea may have roots, or at least maybe we found resonance, in this cartoon, by Vaughn Bode, who also created many other underground comics like Cheech Wizard, the inspiration for this video. (Let me just state for the record that many of Vaugn Bode’s comix are just so… wrong and offensive… that they can only be explained? … excused?… by being so far around the bend that they exist in an alternate universe? So you are forewarned… if you go looking, you’ll probably go blind…)

Also of note… the coining of the term “clingy breathers” in collusion with Jeff and Tim (here fully explained by Tim), ought really to be included in any comprehensive compendium of Trollish Philosophy:

Clingy Breathers: Primordial and questionably significant lifeforms existing in the flux between reality and imagination, named for the respiratory functions they exhibit in their natural habitat. Perched on exposed rock fields and ambulating across crumbling mountainous terrain, their prehensile members defy gravity and common sense as they bask in the searing rays of their home planet’s star, confused beyond the ability to communicate in sentences longer than three words. See also, Howfah izzitoo lodges.

And finally:

Thrizzle Moot Kromply

Fah Teg
Storm Narzp

Gizzooze!

Torteg Vovo, true unbelievers!