Something to muse

There are two articles from TIME magazine that I've been mulling over this morning - and yes, I have also got some work done! Both were part of a feature on 10 Ideas that are Changing the World Right Now - quite an interesting series if you have a spare minute or ten.

The first talks about how religion is adapting to economic times, and that people are feeling resigned to accepting a certain inevitability of fate. At least, that was my interpretation:

Calvinism is back... John Calvin's 16th century reply to medieval Catholicism's buy-your-way-out-of-purgatory excesses is Evangelicalism's latest success story, complete with an utterly sovereign and micromanaging deity, sinful and puny humanity, and the combination's logical consequence, predestination: the belief that before time's dawn, God decided whom he would save (or not), unaffected by any subsequent human action or decision.

Can I recommend that when you get here...you read that excerpt again? It's not exactly one for skimming eyes over in speed-read stylee. Pure genius at work, I thought, although a little depressing in sentiment. Humanity is definitely looking slightly puny when some of the biggest names in the world's financial community are looking, at best, 'a bit shakey.

And then - in at number 5 - is a concept that I saw as bizarrely closely related...Amortality. I definitely suffer from this now, although it is debatable as to whether I came across as in any way credible - much less experienced - in my younger days.

Amortals live among us. In their teens and 20s, they may seem preternaturally experienced. In later life, they often look young and dress younger. They have kids early or late — sometimes very late — or not at all. Their emotional lives are as chaotic as their financial planning. The defining characteristic of amortality is to live in the same way, at the same pitch, doing and consuming much the same things, from late teens right up until death.

Chaotic doesn't even begin to cover it! But I like this concept - it's about fitting as much into life as you feel the need to, and getting the maximum out for as long as is physically possible. This, as opposed to feeling the burden of inevitabile fate while you grudgingly change and mould your life to accommodate finances, kids, work, and so on....and on. I admire people who have children (actually, this sentance could stop there - but I'll contine) that bring a new addition into their life and still live it to the full; rather than stopping travelling, never going out, choosing sensible shoes and being incapable of holding a conversation without inserting baby language or talk of poop and nappies. I'm talking about people who don't let these things get in the way of having some good old fashioned fun on the journey that is life.

We only get one shot, so lets pack in the Calvinist attitude and vote for Amortality. Here's a parting shot from the article that I particularly like. You can probably guess why.

"The important thing is not how many years have passed since you were born," says Nick Bostrom, director of the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford, "but where you are in your life, how you think about yourself and what you are able and willing to do."

Well said, Nick!