One thing that I struggle with is what I actually want. It sounds strange but it’s something I constantly struggle with and prevents me from focusing on a clear objective. I was pondering what I fundamentally want and came up with the following list:

1. Professional success
2. Family success
3. Life enjoyment

I define professional success as being competent in my chosen profession and having such a reputation. For better or worse, I define myself a lot on my job. I take it very personally when I fail to accomplish my best at work. Being successful at my profession and being recognized for it are very important to me.

Family success include more than just blood relations. I include friends and community in this category too because they all blend together for me anyway. First and foremost I want to be a good husband and father. I want to provide for my family physically and emotionally. As a friend and community member I want to be trustworthy, reliable, helpful, and hospitable. I want to enjoy the company of those I am around and I want them to enjoy my company also.

That brings us to the third desire, Life Enjoyment. Life has a lot of great and beautiful things to experience. I want to experience them and not feel bad about it. That means that if I acquire enough wealth I should be able to buy and do the things I want without feeling guilty for doing so. If I want a really nice bottle of scotch or a fine cigar and can afford it, I should do it without feeling guilt. Along the same lines, if I want to purchase an extravagant gift for someone I love and can afford it, I should do that too.

Maybe those seem like obvious things, but it gives me a foundation from which to move forward.

I’ve been doing a little research on Asatru and I find it very appealing. It seems to have a very practical take on life and how to live it. I am notably impressed by the belief that each person is responsible for his or her actions and must pay for those actions in some sense. I see an interesting parallel here with Ayn Rand’s Objectivism, at least in regards to the ethics of self interest. I also think that Objectivism has a lot in common with the Nine Noble Virtues:

1. Courage
2. Truth
3. Honor
4. Fidelity
5. Discipline
6. Hospitality
7. Industriousness
8. Self-Reliance
9. Perseverance

Rand summarized her philosophy in the following manner:

If you want this translated into simple language, it would read: 1. “Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed” or “Wishing won’t make it so.” 2. “You can’t eat your cake and have it, too.” 3. “Man is an end in himself.” 4. “Give me liberty or give me death.”

I see a lot of overlap. If you read Atlas Shrugged, the ultimate Objectivist parable, I think that you will see the overlap too. The only thing missing between the two philosophies is the belief in gods. That omission is the only thing that really kept me from fully embracing Objectivism. Since I perceive Asatru to have similar ideals and it believes in the spiritual side of life it also has a lot of attraction for me. The only catch is shifting archetypal gears to embrace polytheism. I’ll work through that one in a later post.

Jeff Lilly over at Druid Journal has constructed one of the best religious analogies I have ever encountered. Basically he asserts that religion is like language. Language is used to communicate person to person and religion is designed to communicate person to Spirit. That’s it in a nutshell but you really need to read the whole article to fully appreciate the elegance of the analogy.

Jeff’s commentary has given me a lot to think about. The most significant issue at hand is what I want out of religion. As funny as it might sound, determining what I want has always been a challenge for me. One of my fundamental personality traits is that I perceive the infinite possibilities of life vividly. By choosing one path over the others I feel that I must give up many of those possibilities and I hate to lose that potential. The gotcha there is that by not choosing anything I can’t realized any of those possibilities anyway. Most times I do pretty well at managing my dilemma, but it is a constant challenge. More times than not I find myself sitting on the fence between any significant issue in life and I think my fence sitting is a function of failing to choose a path. I guess that I just have to accept that all choices have a cost and I have to pony up sometime or all my opportunities will escape me.

As I have searched for a religion that fits me I keep finding myself drawn more towards the older religions such as Wicca, Paganism, Druidism, Hethenry, or Shamanism. I’m looking for a direct interface with God and these traditions seem to have the most direct connection to God. More modern religions such as Christianity, Islam, and Judaism seem to have more layers of abstraction between worshipers and God. Perhaps that is what pushes me away.

Lots to think about.

I’ve been pretty occupied with work lately.  In fact I just got back from a few days on the road.  As I was taking off last night I noticed the lights of the city and it struck me what a wonder it was.  As I observed all the lights of the city, I imagined the miles and miles of wire that had to be run, the thousands of lamps and light bulbs that had to be created and installed, and the electricity that had to be generated in order to create the light.  The immensity of the effort required to make it all happen and maintain it struck me in its full scale.  I find it remarkable that human beings have been ale to figure out how to squeeze such monuments out of the raw materials found in the ground.

I think that there is a tendancy to see technology as cold and devoid of any type of spiritual element, but last night I think that I saw the spiritual aspect of technology.  Maybe it’s just a matter of scale.