TinyChan

I’m not sure what the best way to say this is, so I’m just gonna say stuff and either it makes sense or it doesn’t. And I’m just going to assert things as if they’re the case without explanation even if that might not capture the full nuance of it.

There are two ways to live: you can live for who you are, or you can live for who you can be. These are two very different types of people, who will have each other, but they both have some truth.

To someone who lives for who they are, there’s some element to their personality of wanting to discover "who they are." They want to live by their true self and they consider their true self to be who they were born as. Not in the physical sense, but in some spiritual sense. Of course, it’s an extreme example, but people who identify as transgender are this personality type. They live for who they are not who they can be. They believe that their soul is different from their body, but they believe that they were created with their soul the way it is, and they do not want to change their soul, they hate the idea of changing their soul. So despite the outward transition of that type of person, despite someone who has that type of personality wanting potentially to change their outer appearance or their physical existence to match their soul, on the inside, they actually don’t want change. They’re deeply offended by change, potentially without realizing it. It’s also true of scientists in a way. A scientist does not want to assert truth, a scientist wants to find truth, and is offended at the idea of asserting a truth based on no evidence. The truth is something you are subject to by reality. It is decided by no one, yet everyone is subject to it.

But there’s another type of person, who I think is best represented by either a Christian or an engineer. Someone who lives for what they could be, doesn’t live to be true to their birth. They are offended by their birth, by their original sin, and aspire to some form of perfection, some form of greatness. Putting Christian and engineer together might seem odd, because Christianity is based on faith and engineering is based on scientific truth, but engineering is not science. A scientist seeks truth, an engineer does not seek truth as it is. An engineer tries to make something true. If it is impossible to go to the moon, an engineer tries to make it possible. An engineer doesn’t search for truth in the same way that a Christian doesn’t try to be more true to their nature. A Christian aspires to engineer themselves to become a more perfect person, more in alignment with God’s will, they aspire to Heaven, how an engineer might aspire to go to space.


Both sides of this are true. You do have a birth, and you do have a death. You were created the way you were born, and you are special for the way you were created, and that is beautiful and it is worth protecting. But at the same time, you could be so much more by the time you die than what you were as you were born, that if you died without accomplishing your potential in life, it would be an insult to yourself. But you have to let half of you die either way. You can’t stay true to your nature while accomplishing your greatest ambitions. One half of you has to die.

There is also a difference in perception of morality between these two personalities. To a Christian, a life that could have been but never was is a death. To someone who lives for who they believe they were on the inside from their birth, life is something that is more easy to give up. Life is almost an insult to their soul, because life offends them through change, to them change is suffering. To the opposite personality type, a lack of change is suffering. So they are incompatible. To an engineer, never being allowed to peruse their creative genius to its full potential is a form of death.

Really, I think the existence of God, as much as scientists or transgender people as two examples may be offended by the idea of God, the belief in God isn’t really about whether or not God exists. In a way, God exists if God doesn’t exist if God is willed to exist. God is a creator, but in religion, the fact that God created everything isn’t really the point. The point isn’t your birth, the point is your death. The point of religion is to become who you need to be in the end, it isn’t about the beginning. The beginning exists, but it’s not central. God is death, and death does exist. A Christian might aspire to the kingdom of Heaven, but human pursuits of greatness and achievement in general, more atheistically as still an aspiration towards an honorable death.

Some people want to preserve the purity of their birth, while others want to ensure the honor of their death. Christianity and engineering have something in common: there is greatness in the end but only if you decide for there to be greatness. You can’t create technology unless you will it to exist. You can’t go to Heaven unless you decide to be a good person. God does not decide whether you go to Heaven or Hell. God has a standard and has given it to you, and either you can meet it, or you can fail to meet it. But the choice is yours.


Really, I find the more active belief that the meaning of life is how you die, not finding some special magical thing that God gave you in birth that must be protected. This idea that perfection can be found in our natural human failings is really the idea that we can hide from God. This idea that all of our failings as humans are justified, or the idea that suffering is something that should be surrendered to, instead of finding meaning in the struggle against it, it’s an idea that there’s some sort of salvation to be found in hiding from God. But you can’t hide from God. Death is inevitable. Either you can aspire towards God, whether there is a God or no God, and here what God really means is the ideal, or you can decide not to do that, and never know what could have been. But in the process, you kill the greater part of yourself.

Also I’m not saying being trans is bad or being a scientist is bad, it’s assigning some kinda tangible thing to vague idea.

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Really what I’m saying is hiding from God is equivalent to hiding from yourself in shame because what you could be is a part of who you are, and to deny that is to deny part of who you are. But some people don’t desire taking agency. They do recognize that who they are is special and from something divine and perfect, but they can’t say that they love God, because God isn’t just birth, God is as much death as God is birth, and the death of you is the height of your accomplishment in life, but it’s also the end of you. So it has to offend you if you love yourself, but you can never be yourself while you’re offended by it.

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Like I guess what I’m saying, is if you have two people: one is a transgender person who never has children who is an atheist, and another who is a conservative Christian who has a wife and family, they both live for something. The first person is living for the preservation of the purity of the birth of their soul while the other is living for the honor of their death before God. The first person might feel that they’re living more for "who they are" as they are originally for, they believe that their soul, not their body, was born this way. But the second person doesn’t care how they were born. They want to be a husband and a father and a provider and a protector, all these things create suffering, it’s responsibility and hardship, but it’s honorable at the same time. And, these two people would hate each other because their way of life would be deeply offensive to each other because they’re both living for different things. They’re both living for themselves but a different part of themselves. But they’re both half dead in a way.

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