Me and My New Pal Tea Tea

Yes the title is as it is to provoke the reader. And though friends know I am more than capable of the most base and crass humor, this actually comes from a video game that I've been playing, video games being the great excuse for the long gap between the last update and this one.

I was chatting with Kael, who should be congratulated once again for taking home first place for poetry in this year's Palancas. He told me to update, and how could I say no? Along with Kael, a student of mine will also be going to the ceremonies; she won first place for the Kabataan essay. Wow, man, wow. I haven't heard yet who any of the other winners are, but I've got my fingers crossed for other friends.

So back to my friend Tea Tea. The past few days have rained us out. On Wednesday, when we were sent home early, I was riding a trike to school. As we came around the U-Turn slot near mini-stop an SUV came down the flyover from Katipunan extension and it sent a wave the size of something you'd see at an amusement park water ride straight into my face. My jacket was soaked through and so was my polo shirt. bummer. Rain water tastes nasty. I have ingested all kinds of liquids and chemicals and other crap into my body. Rain water coming from tire splash of an SUV goes straight to the top of the undesirable column.

We were sent home and the last two days have been spent here at home, trying to write, getting a few paragraphs in before succumbing to the call of the Xbox. Yes, and that is where I found my new pal. Very weird. I start this mission in a game called Ninety-Nine Nights and it says, "You and your new pal Tea Tea head to the blank blank mountains to face the enemy forces." Hmm, ok. Let's go Tea Tea. Who picks these names? In Gears of War I'm Marcus Fenix, in Splinter Cell I'm Sam Fisher, those are normal, sort of. So why this? I don't know.

In between bouts of gaming I find myself delving further for answers in terms of cosmic questions and philosophical inquiry. The temptation to declare myself a bright (which is the word they are trying to get people to use when referring to atheist, to avoid all the negative connotations that the word atheist comes with) is becoming stronger as I read more of contemporary science. The books I'm reading have so many scientists declaring their disbelief, non-belief, or whatever. I wish I could take Kael's stance which is I don't care if there's a god or not. But I do care, and this, for some reason, troubles me terribly.

I had turned my head away from all these things before. I hadn't really thought about it, just kind of drifted away from the church and hadn't cared to much about it either way. But I suppose teaching in a Catholic school, plus the philosphical inquiries on the nature of beauty and concepts of transcendece to a higher One in class, and all the science that I am bombarding myself with, make this question inevitable. What is it that I really believe in.

It's interesting to document what belief can do to people. Just look at the holocaust, the crusades, and contemporary terrorist threats based on fundamentalist notions, both Christian and Islamic. I found myself thinking about whether a soldier in, say, the NPA would have the same guts to be a suicide bomber.

The suicide bomber's eagerness to sacrifice himself to his cause is based on the premise that his belief is the one true belief and that he will be rewarded in the afterlife for making himself a martyr to his belief. Now if we were to talk to someone who didn't believe in an afterlife, let's say if you're a Marxist that doesn't believe in one, then would that soldier be just as willing to die for his cause? Or would he fight harder to stay alive, knowing that this life is it.

Apparently, according to one of the psychologists that I read, one of the problems for us in accepting that there may be nothing for us after we die is that there is no way for us to simulate that utter loss of consciousness. Most of us are dualists, believing in a separation between the body and the "soul" which the scientists prefers to refer to as consciousness or the mind. the mind is different from the brain though. So he says if you're a dualist you believe that after you have shed your mortal coil your consciousness lives on. However if you are a monist you accept that the consciousness, coming from the mind, is inextricable from the brain processes. There is no way for us to simulate this, thus we cannot fathom the idea of not having consciousness, and that is why the belief in an afterlife persists.

Again it's the beliefs that we have that drive us. A belief in the afterlife influences how we act now, thinking that if we can right we build towards entrance to a desirable afterlife. However, if we do not believe, then our precious, short time here on earth becomes that much more precious because this is it, there's nothing more than this, and we must make the most of it.