LIX - haha, oh yeah. more licks.

song of the week: lynyrd skynyrd, tuesday's gone
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT9_tEzjtIU
best classic country rock song, best classic country rock band. well there's grateful dead too. my dad loves this stuff: dylan, young, the eagles, crossby, stills and nash... but tuesday's gone is my choice.

the most important passages in the bible to me are where faithful people challenge God. Abraham pleading for Sodom. Job. Jonah. i can't think of more. does Jesus count? there's very few, which is a pity. maybe in Yancey's book, disappointment with God, which is based substantially on Job, there's more. life is struggle, and it's different for everyone. if 'to live is Christ and to die is gain', what are we missing? who's ready to say that; but shouldn't we all be? i feel skeptical and inadequate at the same time. but i'm human. everyone has their struggles.

i never knew how absurdist i was until wikipedia showed me:

(Simplified) Relationship between existentialism, absurdism and nihilism Atheistic existentialism Theistic existentialism Absurdism Nihilism 1. There is such a thing as meaning or value Yes Yes Yes No 2. There is inherent meaning in the universe (either intrinsic or from God) No Maybe, but humans must have faith to believe there is Maybe, but humans can never know it No 3. Individuals can create meaning in life themselves Yes, it is essential that they do Yes, but that meaning must incorporate God Yes, but it must face the absurd and it must be individual by the "absurd creation" in order to have meaning and sense No, because there is no such meaning to create 4. The pursuit of gaining intrinsic or extrinsic meaning in the universe is possible No, and the pursuit itself is meaningless Yes, and the pursuit itself may have meaning Maybe, the pursuit itself may have meaning No, and the pursuit itself is meaningless 5. The pursuit of constructed meaning is possible Yes, thus the goal of existentialism Yes, thus the goal of existentialism No No 6. There is a solution to the individual's desire to seek meaning Yes, the creation of one's own meaning Yes, the creation of one's own meaning before God Yes, but it is based on the individual's personal meaning since it's impossible to know the inherent meaning in the universe (if one exists) No

i know i'm supposed to be in the second column, but my physical being feels very sympathetic towards the third. very, very sympathetic. and i know in a table form it looks like atheistic existentialism is quite different from absurdism, but sartre's wiki article makes me feel sympathetic to existentialism too, maybe more than sympathetic. see where charles de gaulle vetoed sartre's arrest for civil disobedience, saying, "you don't arrest Voltaire". haha.

there's so little we know about history and great thought of the past. it's amazing and tragic. when we try to look for records (well, wikipedia is basically reliable) on things they did, it's so much based on secondary sources. it's something like a pity that most brilliant people were misunderstood or suffered or didn't live very long. but they were brilliant in their time, and they overcame so much adversity, with and for their brilliance. and we know so very little. i mean, there are so many ideas and theories that have been discovered before us, and which could mean so much to us if we could be aware of them, but we're so ignorant, so blissfully ignorant at that. we are... cogs more than we are cognitive. no. we must make an effort to embrace the work left by men and women before us.

the parallel in popular music is too obvious. what will be the music of my son's and daughter's generation? will they forget allman, clapton, hendrix, page, vaughan ... all my heroes. like i've never known... bach, mozart, mendelssohn, beethoven, chopin, schumann, hadyn, tchaikovsky. sigh. i must do better than that.