In a right-angled triangle, with points E (the Earth), S (the sun), and D (a hypothetical astronomical body), we find the following characeristics:
- the right angle is ESD,
- the distance ES is 1AU,
- and the angle EDS is 1" (1 arcsecond).
In this hypothetical astronomical arrangement, the length SD is considered a parsec, approximately 3.085 x 10^16 metres.
Gee, thanks for fixating yourself on that, brain.
Actually, something just occurred to me. Today's topic of discussion is remarkably relevant to the aforementioned. Wheels in wheels. Fuck you, brain.
Something that's been on my mind a lot in recent weeks, on and off for a couple of months actually, is the subject of spirituality. Stop reading here if you're horrified by the prospect of spiritual musings from a teenager. Lord knows I would be.
I was talking to someone about it, and much to my surprise, he expressed that he considered himself a heavily spiritual person. I'm not one to judge- no, let me rephrase, I'm not one to care what anyone considers themselves, unless they consider themselves the personified bane of my material existence and actively take to pelting stones at me from the first floor of the food court, but the reason I found it surprising in the first place was based on an anti-adolescent prejudice. At a more basic level, all religions/philosophies are exponents of human spirituality, but the general modern zeitgeist concerning spirituality encompasses all of "anything that isn't Christianity", an ideal I personally find infuriating.
So at first, I just assumed he meant he invested himself in a bastard mixture of Buddhism, Hinduism, Kabbalah, and non-Theistic Satanism, a combination which would completely undermine the core philosophies of the individual faiths. Any combination of the faiths would render the individual parts moot, excepting to people who have an incredibly detailed and in-depth understanding of each, so detailed that he/she could pick and choose aspects of each without losing their original significance. So that idea makes me mad, in short. But this isn't about what makes me mad, that's a completely different type of post.
Wait, I need to be listening to Dead Can Dance for this whole discussion to not feel stupid... there we go.
It occurred to me, rather, I reasoned it myself, by contextual details (which escape me, unfortunately) and the significance of the expression of spirituality, that what he meant was something entirely different. What he meant, when he defined himself as a spiritual person, is something like "spirituality is an undefinable, intuitive sense that governs subconscious emotions". So basically 'what your heart tells you', which isn't too bad a definition. He believed in gut feelings, in intuition and subconscious perception. Or maybe he didn't and I just made all of this up. I like it anyway, and it's positively coloured the way I interact with him. What's important is that he reacted to my surprise with inquisition and asked me what I defined as spirituality, and I said, essentially: "everyone can make up their own damn mind about it", and he agreed and it was a nice moment for everyone involved.
Whoa, Ollie, don't go speeding towards the point, you'll disorient yourself.
And since that evening several months ago, I've been thinking in brief spurts about what it means to be spiritual person, and what spirituality is. Because I really don't know, and for some reason I feel like it's an important thing for me to do. It occurred to me on a very long walk yesterday. I figured it out, clever me. Sorry, kudos me. You know what I'm talkin' about.
So, basically, the all-important conclusion that I came to, to which I came while listening to the very same Dead Can Dance song I'm listening to now (Song of the Stars, if you care to know) (actually, I wonder if the song has anything to do with it OH WAIT STARS, bear with me), is that spiritual practice is a way of orienting yourself in a more universal sense. It's a way of placing yourself in the world, in the universe, in whatever. In my eyes, to be spiritual person is to understand where you stand in relation to everyone else. When I say the world and the universe I don't mean the physical entities, because that can be defined perfectly and mathematically... except for the universe one. What I mean is the collective of human consciousness, thought, and interaction.
And that's why the parsec thing is relevant! Because by definition, a parsec is about a placement within space. You see? I'm not mad, just obscure and ridiculous!
I thought quite a bit about it, and it all seems to make sense. All religions seem to be about defining oneself, finding a place. You use these extant philosophies; Abrahamic religion, Eastern philosophy, modern spiritual practice, to, or so it all seems to me, understand your place within a psycho-social matrix, or whatever other stupid phrase you can come up with to describe the collection of human existence. Most modern popular religions are about collectivism: they rely on the base philosophy that humans are generally social creatures, no, they are social creatures by necessity, and most of the theories they espouse focus on that. You see a lot of religious texts talking about actions regarding other humans. Thou shalt not be an utter fucknuckle etc etc etc. These religions find a place for you, a place long established. And that's fine too. The people that ascribe modern life to these religions are spiritual people too, they understand where they stand.
I'll discuss further by way of the book I'm reading, Perdido Street Station. It's pretty great new-fantasy, 'weird fiction' I think is the generally accepted term. Anyway, one of the fictional sentient races within the world in which the book is set, Bas-Lag, is the (subtly-named) garuda: a race of bird people from the northern deserts. Their entire culture is about maximizing choice for the individual, it's the ultimate form of socialism. Their entire penal code is based on the idea of choice-theft. You can rob someone of the right to choose their own fate, and that constitutes a crime. A lot of the forms of choice-theft are just analogies for what we interpret as criminal acts. It's really fucking confusing, if I'm honest, but that's not relevant. What's important is that it's discussed that the idea of choice-theft points to a very interesting collective psychology, that every individual in traditional garuda society is constantly conscious of their own choices, but also completely aware of the social matrix in which they live. They have to be, their entire society is founded on being aware of it. To me, that constitutes exactly what I define as spirituality, an individual aware of its placement in a manner of respects, except in this case that philosophy has been codified into a form of tribal law.
And that's the kind of internal debate I have with myself on a daily basis. It very rarely verbalises. That feels really good to see in proper words. I hope that anyone reading this understands what the fuck I'm on about. I'm not even sure if I do.
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