My take on the idea of 'god'

To me, the idea of 'god' has been taken far too literally for far too long, as has the definition of 'life'. To me, god is the giver of life, and as god gives life to humanity and to every animal on the planet, according to Abrahamic religions, I believe that the giving of life is far less specific than what we consider it to be.

The idea of 'giving life' is, ultimately, the idea of a usefulness for an item. If living is expending energy, then the idea of life, in the ordinary concept which most people take for granted, I find to be too narrow. Giving of life is about attributing a usefulness to someone or something; a human has a life just as a dog has a life to experience the universe, just as a tree has a life to give oxygen to things which need to breathe.
It is useful for me to point out my own more or less philosophical opinion on the meaning of life.

The meaning of life, to me, is a means to an ends. I feel, as a 'something', that it is impossible for there to be a literal 'nothing', and that 'something' will always be 'somewhere' to make sure there is no 'nothing' anywhere. From this perspective, there is a perception of nothing if there is nothing to perceive anything, and as such, the universe is in a state of being to make sure there is no 'nothing', and every living (by a standard definition of living) thing inhabits this universe to ensure that there is no perception of 'nothing'.

 As I said before, life is, in my context, the usefulness of an item, but more specifically, life is something which is given to anything which has a use. Ultimately, this conforms to the nonspecific idea of what constitutes life; a beginning, a middle, and an end. I own a watch which helps me tell the time. This watch was made sometime, and it was given life when it was created because it was created to serve a purpose. My initial interest of the watch conforms to the development stage of life (if transposed onto that of sentience), where it begins to notice a perceived interest in itself. It then progresses through into its full usefulness, where I own the watch, and the watch will, just like old age, begin to suffer faults, and eventually lose usefulness and die to me. The relationship I have with my watch; that I own the watch, and it is useful to me, is what constitutes giving life, and as my relationship to this watch is giving life to the watch, I conclude in saying that my relationship with my watch is god.
Or, part of god. God is every relationship ever. It isn't one thing, it is everything. Everything in the full universe is, in some way, experiencing god, because it is only in this universe because it has a use or a potential use, and therefore is either living, or has the potential to live to someone or something at some time. Every relationship I form with an item, a person, an animal, or even a tree, is out of my perceived necessity, and in doing so, this relationship is giving life to the item, person, animal, or even the tree. As relationships are formed out of perceived importance, necessity, or purpose, he who is convinced to be without purpose is truly Godless.

My misogynistic views on feminism

During a relatively peaceful conversation with someone I know, my thoughts drifted towards the ever present and often talked about topic of feminism, something which seems to be taking on a life force of its own without the need for activists. Hell, simply saying the word feminism seems to be enough to strike a shudder through the spine of most warm blooded males. It's a dirty word with dirty connotations, and my opinions of feminism, in a contemporary context, are unfortunately tainted in this respect.

My entire negative opinion of contemporary feminism can be deduced to two key points. First of all, I want to put down my own little disclaimer to the entire topic. This disclaimer will be continued with in at least one of the points I make in this article.

First of all, I'm not misogynistic. I think the idea of 'hating women' is ridiculous. If I said I hated black people, I'd be called racist. If I said I hated white people, I'd be called confused. The problem with these statements is that they lack justification. I don't hypothetically hate black people, I just disagree fundamentally with the opinions and personalities of every black person I've ever met. Similarly I don't hypothetically hate white people, I just hate the personalities and opinions of every single white person I've ever met. From this perspective, I don't hate women, and I think the only way terms like 'misogyny' can be qualified is through the use of sexually charged derogatory statements. 

That's a tangent, but what I want to get at is I do believe misogyny is real in certain contexts. I accept that misogyny is real because I also accept that misandry is real, and I consider that equalising both misogyny and misandry is one of the most important things when finding a basis in this ridiculously convoluted arena of philosophy called third wave feminism.

The first point I want to bring up is that third wave feminism is, at the end of the day, detached feminism. One of its primary criticisms is that it lacks a genuine purpose. First wave feminism had the issue of the voting and, ultimately, the considering of females as 'less than citizens' as a result of this. Second wave feminism fought against hegemonic sexism. Third wave feminism has the need to fight against something, but nothing to fight against. Not wanting to stray off the path of being called 'feminism', third wave feminism became the fight for 'me'. It became the 'look at what I am' approach to feminism. I agree fully with the criticism I mentioned against third wave feminism (TWF) because it lacks a genuine attempt at social or political improvement. Instead, what it does is vaguely define itself as feminism, attribute broad, sweeping arguments as its focal point, and then latch onto any number of minor or otherwise detached social injustices and, for a brief period of time, makes that its focal point. Of course, the problem with this is its focal point is then interpreted in different ways: either they are focussing on that and that exclusively, which leads to the belief that it is only a minor subsidiary organisation within the broader range of feminism (which these TWFs will tell you is not what they are), or that it is just a cluttered, almost schizophrenic attempt at a social movement with a lack of real direction. 

As I said previously, TWF has become the fight for 'me'. Many members of feminism, it seems, hold on to key social problems such as rape and the gender pay gap, despite their own inexperience with the issues, and then use them to become social altruists of the issues. I'm in no way saying that only rape victims should be allowed to support anti-rape movements. What I am saying is, like the civil rights movement in the 1960s, the key, vocal figureheads were members of the community who had experienced the injustices of these issues. White males who, despite fully supporting the civil rights movement, never tried to promote it the same way as Martin Luther King. Unfortunately, thanks to the abilities of social media and the internet, opinions are allowed to be expressed far more loudly, and to far more people, than ever before. People who would have, at any time in the history of democracy before now, been sideline supporters and voters for issues they wanted to change, are now willingly being thrusted into positions of social power with their opinions. In a lot of ways, it seems, the ability to hold political opinions on the internet has been diluted by two categories of popularity. Thanks to the push for massive social media giants like Facebook to denonymise the internet, the people with the most 'social power', especially in terms of feminism, become those who are the best looking, and have the most agreeable opinion. 

My third, although initially first, and final issue regarding third wave feminism, is its take on radicalism. It seems that every major social movement is going to have radicals within the movement, but it hasn't been until the third wave of feminism that these radicals within their movement have really been taken with legitimacy in a genuine context. What I find even worse is that, when feminism becomes the topic of discussion in places like universities, where thoughts and ideas should be allowed to be exchanged freely and judged on their own merit, criticism of feminism, with direct reference to the radicalism within the movement, is something that a student just shouldn't do, and is enforced by most feminist-supporters with almost religious zealousy. When any buzzword spitting feminist is presented with the idea of radicals within their beloved social revolution, their response is often 'we shouldn't talk about them, because ignoring them makes them go away.'

Of course, the biggest problem I have with this line of reasoning is that, in a radical group scenario, the group as a whole will take on the mannerisms of the loudest, most obnoxious member in the group. Coupled with the fact that individuals, when presenting within a group, often feel more supported or closer towards some concept of 'invincible' thanks to the group mentality, and a comparison between a group of radicals and a toddler can be made. It can then be asserted that if a toddler is doing something which its parents disagree with, the parent, as a responsible adult, should be disciplining the child and teaching it not to do that. Ignoring a toddler can lead to very dangerous or exposing situations for both parties. 

Superimposing this idea on the relationship between a revolutionary movement (the parents) and the radical group within the movement (the toddler), it can be almost guaranteed that if the group is ignored, it will 'test the waters' a little bit more. Its goal, at the end of the day, is attention, and, as its group mentality allows, it will eventually begin doing more insane things to get attention due to a lack of discipline and perceived lack of acceptance. 

What the third wave feminism movement should be doing, along with promoting its vague ideologies and self-centred approach towards 'empowerment', is actively looking to name and shame radical movements. Ignorance, in this case, is not bliss, and feminism and the world have unfortunately lived under this misguided notion for far too long.