truth does not exist

i've been thinking about conflict in the role of fiction. conflict as it's portrayed in fiction. conflict between characters, ideals, or the former embodied in the latter. whatever.

i think the primary role of fiction is to create what the mind cannot absorb naturally. fiction used to just be a smaller and more palatable rendering of reality. it created order and implied that life would surrender to the same rules of logic that theater does and for the most part it does. the lives of the characters are simultaneously sacred and worthless. the audience holds them sacred as the whole of the drama generally relates to their actions. to the writer the lives of the characters are worthless. they will die for the sake of the drama, they will succumb to the theme and should they disobey the unspoken rules they shall surely suffer.

and what better thing can a person be than the main character in his own drama? the comedy of youth, the drama of life, and the tragedy of death. but we're not characters in anyone's drama and as far as control goes we all might as well be sitting on the couch screaming at the tv.

but who's writing the drama of planet earth? the drama of america? and what type of movie is this anyway? i know who.

6.8 billion monkeys at typewriters. they're typing and typing and i still can't tell whether this chaos is elegant and brilliant or random and atrocious. i mean this is an all or nothing type situation right? it's either everything or it's nothing? it either all means something or none of it means anything, right? god's either watching or he isn't and we either get reincarnated or we don't. when it comes to different religious staking claims on the unknowable i still think about it like somebody's right and somebody's wrong. i've been boiling down to the absolutes and i think i have a couple i'm willing to stick with

1-if you can't know then you don't know

if you don't know but you act like you do you're a christian
if you think you know but you act like you don't you're a buddhist

then there's the atheists. can they really do anything but tell other people they're wrong?

then there's the agnostics. wouldn't they just love to be the prophet ridiculed in the first act who turns out right in the end?

so where do i sign up? and why do i have to?

every now and then i have a quick little crisis of faith in humanity and think OH MY FUCKING GOD PEOPLE REALLY LIVE THIS WAY. i do it when i hear about girls getting their genitals mutilated and when i see people go to church all the same.

people still think their particular brand of knowing the unknowable holds court. well, not only holds court, but has a moral authority over the other.

buddhists have it right and this makes me think i understand buddhism more than people who study it. (ed. note: CC if you're reading this i don't mean you i mean the yuppies who start yoga and eastern thought to burn the bad karma they've accumulated in the imaginary race to the top of the pyramid) anyways, all roads of thought that want the closest thing to truth anyone will ever be able to observe lead to the idea that truth does not exist.

that's the one noble truth of roman: truth does not exist.

but it's nice to pretend it does.