Pre-Industrial Visual Cultures :: Culture Cultural Papers

Pre-Industrial Visual Cultures I remember my father's futile attempts at trying to get me interested in Eastern philosophy. He got me cartoon versions of Zen philosophy and the teachings of Chinese philosophers, and would try to draw parallels between their ideas and what was going on in our lives. Unfortunately, I was more preoccupied with my telephone-marathons and other such pressing issues. The effect of his words on me was like water rolling off a duck's back. As I got older and less oblivious to the world, old ways and ideas were no longer applicable and I found myself left with nothing to hold onto. My Christian background could not accommodate my intellectual and spiritual evolution - to question something even as fundamental as how our beings came into existence is blasphemy. I dislike how it encourages intellectual complacency and have problems with its inherently patriarchal and highly theatrical nature. The whole colorful and tragic production seems egotistical because the purpose of our existence is to worship God - and dire consequences await us should we do otherwise. And it doesn't matter if we were born in a non-western culture, where we will never hear the word 'Jesus'. It is still fire and brimstone for us for all of eternity through no fault of our own. It is not only very discriminating in the way the religion condemns the rest of the world but the whole production of creation and damnation seems really unnecessary if you t hink about it. Since God is supposedly all-knowing, he (assuming God is male - and no doubt white) must have known from the start that a part of his creation would acknowledge and worship him and the rest would be condemned to hell for eternity. Did he do it so he could say, "Oh, everything went as expected...too bad about all those in hell..." at the end of it all? The purpose of our existence in the Christian cosmos made no sense to me. Most of all, it's strange that all should be well and souls be saved as long as we obediently and unquestioningly follow some human interpretations (that Christians themselves cannot agree on) of some other human's words. At the same time I had trouble dealing with the transience of all things and feeling like I fell out of a UFO by accident because I felt as though I did not resonate with any human profoundly.