I'd like to thank Mel Gibson for teaching me that "Ecce homo" is Latin for "Behold the Man." This is what Pontius Pilate proclaims to the mob of querulous Jews as he plants the crown of thorns on Jesus' head.

What I beheld in man--and woman--as I stomached The Passion of the Christ was the power of loyalty. At least a hundred times in the film, someone gazed into Jesus' eyes, enraptured with hope and faith. Early on, we see Peter perch up like a gopher with nervous hands both near his chest and tilted outward as if to gesture, "Lord, I will gladly sacrifice my heart for you."

Intreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God.
Bible, Ruth 1:16 (Random Bible Quote)

Hominids must have necessitated messiahs and religions at some point in evolution. As they were arising up on two feet they must have also arisen as proto-philosophers, wondering not only where they came from, what they were made of, and where they were going, but most importantly what they were to do. Loyalty provided the cure of purpose through the vehicle of self-sacrifice.

To nail-in the concept of loyalty, I ask you to reflect: when was the last time you felt fiercely loyal?

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We are impulses, rapidly firing off, so many times per second per second, that we lose a sense of the negative space: whatever it is in between those impulses. We have discrete decisions, discrete ideas, discrete actions dotting a timeline that is our life, but in between those dots is infinitely crisp emptiness.

Just stop, hold your breath, look at the clock and realize for a second, that nothing has to move. Motion is just an illusive blur between time steps. Progress is just an emotional heart beat, an experience of relative tipping of the scales. In other words, nothing matters.

Nothing. Matters. From the nothing, comes the matter. The nothingness is the matter. We have to make everything matter otherwise we lose hope.

However, I take a twisted pleasure fantasizing on the ultimate truth, that there is no matter. That what I observe before me are just chemical reactions creating a sensation of a sense of self and a sense of impending need.

I find it amusing sometimes, though, to see everything move with so much direction and purpose. I sit in restaurants or in school in awe of how forward facing our vectors are. I'm not crying for a "live in the moment" mantra here, but rather a look at how "living" we are. Or rather, look how any "verb" we are. We are a "doing" species, always with an A and a B. A forwards and a backwards. Even if you are going to "live for the moment," let's say, by enjoying that Snickers candybar you just bought, you participate in a process of self-satisfice.

And that's what we are trapped in, this huge process layered upon process of self-something.

But what about the backdrop, what about the space between the points. There is a static noise that doesn't move, that seeks no A to B. I sometimes skip a heart beat thinking, what if I were to fall in between the cracks. What if I just got derailed from all trajectory. If every neuron in my brain said, "okay, let's stop." I wouldn't just end, the universe as I perceive it would end.

This hopefully illustrates how fascinating it is that the brain is so constant. The brain must be some continuous loop that repetitively bites the same function. We wake up everyday and don't forget to go to school or work, right? We eat on time, we in general survive. But why? In general there is a track before us, and we kind of shift left and right for the hell of it: to get a better partner, to make more money, or to be happier perhaps. But ultimately it's the same track with the same startpoint and the same destination: birth and death.

I wonder how this awareness of the abyss will be resolved in the Singularity. If we are truly to end up as enlightened as we may be in the Singularity, then people will just pop themselves off realizing there is no need to go from A to B anymore. Well, the Singularity will probably be a handicapped enlightendness, where we are still the same constant loop, constantly striving for whatever.

Or maybe I'm just sick of studying for Finals Week.

Nihilism [Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy]

"What if everything is an illusion and nothing exists?
In that case, I definitely overpaid for my carpet"
-- Woody Allen