I’m sick as a dog. I feel like crap. I don’t know if it is covid, but it is definitely a cold or something. I have a cough, fever, and a clogged ear. I’m having trouble resting, and I’m very tired. I normally isolate from the world due to my current spiritual training, so this covid lock down hasn’t been as hard for me as I have heard from others. I live with my family, and we have not exactly had a safe quarantine. Unmasked people, other than my family and safe friends have frequented the house. I have no control over that unfortunately, and now I’m potentially sick. As long as my mom doesn’t catch illness, I’m ok. I don’t fear death, regret or live in the past, so if anything happened to me, I would be in complete peace. I’ve done everything I’ve wanted to do in life. I’m not denying myself a future, but I really don’t plan too far ahead other than what is needed to survive.
I was remembering today that I used to be a fortuneteller in my youth. At the apex of that path I worked as a tarot card reader at a store in a tourist trap by the shore. I was making my first transition from a superstitious minded person to a more rational skeptical kind of person. I respect those that believe what they want and respect and don’t push their beliefs on me. I love learning about others’ beliefs and thinking processes so that I can further understand and relate. I was taught a long time ago that we hate what we don’t understand.
Getting back to my story, I came up with this argument. This was one of my first ‘official’ rational arguments that I would have with myself that would change my life in any way. I was deconstructing and positively criticizing my own behavior, beliefs, and thoughts. There are infinite possibilities of what can happen to you at any given time. A tarot deck has 56 cards with two interpretations each (upside down and right side up). If you count all of possible interpretations of what one card means in relation to another, or a card’s meaning in a tarot spread etc, you would reach a very large number of meanings. The interesting thing is that no matter how large that number is it is always finite, meaning not infinite. How can something finite predict or describe something infinite? The possibility of an event is occurring is infinite, yet the cards can only predict a finite number of possibilities. Therefore, the cards can’t and don’t represent any possible present or future without excluding some possibilities rendering such methods of fortunetelling as invalid. This same argument can be used for i ching, astrology, palmistry, etc.
In short I realized I was fooling people unknowingly. I guess it was a moment of self discovery like when I figured out the Easter bunny didn’t exist! Morally I had to stop, and I did.
There is a little side note to this argument which depends on a person’s world view. If one believes in destiny, or the fact that future events are not completely random but guided by some invisible hand, then the possibilities that can happen at any moment are severely limited by that invisible hand. I have also, for myself, reasoned away the invisible hand, but I will save that for another time. If a superstitious element is introduced to a rational argument I would argue that the whole argument is null and void due to the element of superstition introduced.
The memory of that argument, or of my early teenage years, brought a smile to my face. I really don’t like remembering the past, but I can’t help catching a flash here or there. I believe that people spend too much time re-living and spoiling the moment by trying to preserve it instead of living it. I think I’ve willfully taken two pictures in the past five years. One as proof of damage from a car accident and one of my family from when my uncle was alive. I’m not a big believer of destiny, but I felt that was the last Christmas I would have my family together in that way, and I wanted a photo my family and I could share that had the old gang together.
Well I hope I recuperate fast! Sorry for the little rant, but I get bored of video games, and I’m a little too sick to retain my studies.
The Scarlet Lamp 