Thoughts 11/16/2007 November 16, 2007
Posted by Kelsey Martineau in Psychology, Religion.Tags: Psychology, Religion
6 comments
“Evil gains work their punishment.”
My friend Ethan introduced me to this quote by Sophocles, and I absolutely love it. Have you ever read one of those quotes, that the moment you read it, it hit you like a sledgehammer? The ironic thing is, the time in my life when I heard it, back in June, was the exact appropriate timing. No matter how you look at that phrase, it works. Regardless of what happens, an evil deed never goes unpaid. I’m sure a lot of people will interpret that as a biblical phrase, but that’s not exactly what I mean. Guilt plays a big part in people’s lives. I’ll tell you something I’ve noticed about people, and I’ve seen it over and over again. People, when committing acts that are wrong, immoral, etc… seek justification over everything. Humans do things to appease that inner-feeling of guilt and remorse. It’s almost like, even if a person has deceived themselves into believing something, they can sleep at night. That isn’t really how the world works. When one feels as he/she has committed wrongful acts, they may justify it in different ways. Removing religious symbols, talking about God or their chosen deity less, because they feel guilt and remorse, or claiming that when they feel like they pray, their prayers “don’t get passed the ceiling.” If you believe in Christianity, it goes back to the very first story in the bible, when Adam hid from God in the forest. We just do it much more subtly.
Isn’t it incredible how much emotion plays a part in our life? Emotion is probably the number one misconception when dealing with destiny. This isn’t the first time I’ve mentioned this in a post, but we’ll analyze it a little deeper. I don’t think the majority of people understand how humans are. There are so many factors that cause us to feel “attached” to a person, and we misconceive that feeling for destiny. The truth is, women do it more than men. Out of all my friends, in probably about a 70/30 mix between male/female, about 20% of the guys believe in destiny, and every single one of the girls believe in it. The definition of destiny or fate in my opinion is a way to explain a mistake. Perfect example 1: Girl gets pregnant, girl wants to believe this was fate, girl attempts to force relationship. To her, it has to be “destiny” Perfect example 2: Someone gets fired due to a mishap at work. They hear of another “excellent” job that’s open, and before they get the job, they assume that they’ll have it and it was “meant to be” That’s just a couple of examples, but you get the picture. Example 1 is probably the most common.
Girls tend to believe in destiny much more than guys. Probably due to the fact that they are all emotional to an extreme. We can’t admit mistakes. That’s the problem here. No one wants to accept the fact that they’ve screwed up, so what do we do? Pawn it off on either Fate/Destiny, or God. Me personally, I don’t know what to believe about a lot of things any more. That’s part of the reason I chose this topic today.