Comments on: What Do I Believe

By: Maureen

Maureen — Sat, 03 May 2008 05:45:42 +0000

There is something so artificial and false seeming about casting about for subject matter, in my experience. Forcing the issue is the reason there are so many bad and meaningless books out there. I don’t know how anyone can write without believing in something. I don’t know how a thinking person can go through life without positing, on a daily basis, what they believe because its a provisional excersise, that’s for certain, but it seems utterly shallow and soulness not to need to do this – a process for which writing is the perfect medium. I think every great book grapples with some moral truth or other, and doing so on a daily basis constitutes the drama of being alive. How can you call yourself a writer and have no beliefs, in anything? You must have some belief about what’s good and bad, what is just and what is cruel and wrong. These are the primal motivations of human beings. I think you don’t knwo what you believe, you must be operating on automatic pilot if this is the case. Every human being breathing at this moment believes something, even if they don’t what it is, or haven’t found the words for it.

By: Peg

Peg — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 05:54:48 +0000

@ Will, that band was/is Rush.
Interesting post, Gordon. Your #1 is something.

By: gordon

gordon — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 02:56:41 +0000

And what the hell is wrong with rum?

By: Jeffrey Yamaguchi

Jeffrey Yamaguchi — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 02:28:07 +0000

I believe that we made a deal, and I believe you will fulfill it, and I believe it will lead to a different kind of breakthrough, and I believe that we will be raising some very expensive whiskey (please don’t ruin this future moment with a rum phase) to something amazing.

By: Molly

Molly — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 22:33:35 +0000

In our cynical, ironic, post-ironic, meta-clever times, taking a moment like this is almost revolutionary. Thanks for this post.

By: Will Entrekin

Will Entrekin — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 21:47:44 +0000

Which group was it who said that “If you choose not to decide/ then you still have made a choice”? I wonder if it’s analogous to belief. One can espouse belief in nothing, but still such belief strikes me as active belief.

So belief in nothing is different from lack of belief in something. Like atheism is less lack of belief in God than active belief that there is no God (and, really, should be treated as the latter, because viewing it as the former smacks of thinking that there really is a God atheists simply don’t believe in, and that skews the entire argument).

By: ll

ll — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 17:40:49 +0000

There is no spoon. I say that to get a laugh. But seriously, I think the great thing about the Beats and Existentialists is not that I believe in nothing but that it was an examination of nothing. I don’t ever respond to postings but I decided to because I have been thinking about this type of thing a lot recently, more so to do with the end of a novel I am working on. It is not enough to know life is foolish but to have the experiences to know life is foolish that makes me look forward to finally writing that ending.