A choice of two worldviews

Two worldviews. Both--are equally valid, and are ripe for the picking. Allow me to explain.

As a child, I quickly outgrew my peers in intellect. I am not bragging, or making waves, but just repeating what people told me. Personally, I can not remember much before third grade, and yet my third grade teacher, of which I had had a good relationship with, was much astonished by my nervous angst.

Raised a cradle catholic, I have always wanted to know the key to salvation. I figured there must have been something I could do, something to prove to myself a sense of finality and transcendence. A funny thing, I shake my head and chuckle as I sit here writing this: I never once thought about love as a means of transcendence. I guess I never will.

So. I stand at a crossroads. Fast forward eighteen years, and I am a staunch athiest, a cynic who possesses, who knows very well the keys of hate. I am familiar with the hate of the world. Today, gang violence is responsible for more deaths than actual genocide. Tribal savages, all of them. And the cultured and cultivated sit in their computer rooms late at night, downloading porn and masturbating. Women eat, grow fat under fast food signs like Mcdonald's, and we can't even fish in our lakes without catching one with an extra fin.

Like I said, I stand at a crossroads. I have grown up in excess and waste, and I have to admit, I find it liberating. I find it as relaxing and numbing as smoking pot. The myriads of images slide past my eyes, dancing figures that glow neon hue. Humanity as a soulless society--as greedy, corrupt, and unchaste: I find it entertaining. I find myself at home here as I realize that maybe this new world is the key to greatness. As long as we spend our hate wisely, we can be the third reich.

It's like a completely new void, with completely new concepts coming out, and I stand at the edge, wondering If I should take the plunge. Something else, however, tugs at me. If I turn around, I will find another void, one who's essence is much more peaceful. Imagine the yogis of india. The Tibetan Llamas. These wise men are relics from the past, who have supposedly achieved human perfection, and the end to suffering.

Before I take suffering as the new happiness, I wonder. Wasn't the cessation of suffering the goal, the true goal, the end of it all as a sweet sweet release? Why have I turned my back on peace, tranquility, for the ceaseless chaos of angst? Why?

You see, there are two worldviews that we as humans stand between. The first worldview sees endless strife and struggle as a pointless illusion. It is ignorance that keeps us bound to pain. And as long as we grasp for money and sex and drugs and porn, we will never be happy.

But there is another worldview, and unlike the heaven/hell dichotomy, it is not so clear which worldview we should prefer. indeed, we can choose to see this strife, this struggle, as a type of game. It is glory we seek, and suffering is the road to awe. Kill millions, to erect a mighty cathedral across the stars. Kill billions, to find oneself sitting among that throne. Kill god, and replace him as the spawn of the devil himself.

We can choose, we can. We can choose to be everything humanity is: evil and good struggling forever in a glorious battle. There is nothing wrong with that! Humanity is both evil and good, and to create civilization is to be the result of billions of years of evolution, of struggle, of trying to survive.

Or... we can choose to find tranquility: A boring break from the norm this is not human at all. There is no human instinct towards cessation, of which this worldview represents perfectly. And yet, to achieve, through endless practice, that peaceful renunciation of both good and evil, and to take instead nondual tao certainly is atractive. We could transcend humanity. Escape the universe. Become buddha.

No choice is better than the other, in this case, as I have found. Be power, or be cessation. Which is it? I stand between two voids, of completely different origin, and stand between the twin peaks of sorrow as joy, and no sorrow at all. Only joy. What, oh what, will I choose?