Cover image for post A Purpose in Three Parts, by ValiantRaptor47

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A Purpose in Three Parts

Well, to look at purpose, one must first understand the denefition of purpose. According to the dictionary, purpose is “the reason for which something is done or created or for which something exists.” Well, if that is the case, then it should be fairly easy to discern what our purpose is, or will it? No, the question is of the purpose of what, us? Is it a question of us as writers, us as biological humans, or us as philosophers? To answer this question, allow me to break it down into little segments.

Firstly, we are biologically humans, and thus, according to instinct, our purpose is to eat, breathe, sleep, drink, reproduce, exercise, and repeat. This is, of course, according to the laws of biology. The only goal in life, according to these laws, is to avoid harm and stay alive until we die. Utilitarianism in its most vulgar form. But everything has its own laws. This may be the answer for biology, for instance, but it could never be the case for philosophy. To make this easier, and to narrow it down, I shall address the three segments of our little definition of purpose.

The previous paragraph does justice for the first part. It answers the question: “why is something done?” We can pursue goals that are not in correlation with the laws of basic survival as long as we maintain that survival. For instance, as long as we eat and drink and sleep regularly, we can perhaps learn to paint, or to drive, or go on an expedition somewhere, and so forth. So in the context of humans, things are done because we prioritize: we do what we need to survive first, and then work out from there. When building a civilization, one would first need a water source, then a food source, then a central structure, then a city, then a military, and on and on and on. The bigger they get, the more they need. Similarly, each individual human, as they grow, will require different things, but the basic essence of survival still lingers. We are done, so to speak, by surviving, and we may pursue other goals from there.

Now for the second part of the definition. Allow me to elaborate on the question: “why is something created?” Specifically, why are we created? Simply put, we evolved. Over millions and millions of years, life forms adapted and changed in accordance with their environment in ways that best suited their survival, and now we have reached the shape and mentality of the common Homosapien. We are probably not done evolving, but as of now, we are as we are. So, because evolution follows the trend that a species evolves in whatever manner benefits survival, that must be the reason for which we were created, survival (anyone else seeing a pattern here?).

But something came before the first life forms roamed the Earth, and those are the elements. All elements are made up of atoms, and all atoms contain electrons. All elements react according to their electron count. All elements become stable when they reach pairs of electrons that add up to eight, and that is why anything reacts at all. We are made up of elements, and we are made up of atoms, and thus, we are made up of electrons. From a scientific perspective, life is nothing more than a tool that electrons use to become stable. As we eat, chemical reactions take place, and so forth. If we died, these reactions could not take place and stability would be that much further from reach for these elements, so thus, it is suitable for the elements that we strive to stay alive. Once again, we come back to survival as our main purpose.

But now we have the last part of the definition of purpose, that of existence. Why does anything exist? But, more importantly, why do we exist? Now, I have explained the natural and scientific reasons for our existence, but what about the philosophical? This is where things become very interesting. As we have seen before, there is no purpose to live other than to simply survive, as almost all other animals do without a second thought. But humans, humans are curious. We pursue things that may not necessarily benefit strictly survival. We have desires, pleasures, and longings that are not required by nearly all other life forms. So why, for what reason, do we exist?

Now things become controversial, because, simply speaking, everyone has their own reason or purpose, in their own eyes. In this case, purpose must mean the meaning of life. There is no single purpose of life that all life forms must adhere to in the philosophical sense (except, of course, simple survival). To believe that life has only one meaning or purpose is, in my opinion, foolish. Everybody alive has different values and no one can dictate what those values should be. I, for example, have mixed views of religion. But what right do I have to judge religion if I am not religious, and what right has a religious person to force their religion upon anyone else? No one has the right to make assertions for others. So, in a simple sense, there is no wider meaning of life, as far as can be discerned. Everyone has their own little meanings.

The way I see it, life has no meaning. All empires fall, all will at some point die and return to dust, everybody will eventually be forgotten, all legacies at some point die, and so on and so forth. For some reason, most people seem to believe that a life without meaning is not one worth living. I say, “who cares?” I feel freer without any purpose to adhere to. I follow my desires, and I try not to hurt others along the way, but ultimately, I couldn’t care less what I or anybody else does with their life. My life is my own, and their lives are their own. But that is only in the grander scheme of life. Objectively, life, according to my nihilistic beliefs, has no meaning, but what about relative to society?

We are still speaking philosophically, of course (so the answer of basic survival is already acknowledged). Relative to society, there are a series of little purposes which we may follow that, though they may not mean anything in the grand sense, do carry a little weight in the small moments in which we live them. Every day I peruse little purposes. I got out of bed this morning, for instance. My next purpose was to brush my teeth, and then wash my face, and then comb my hair, and then eat breakfast…My purpose now is to write an essay that tries to answers the question, “what is our purpose?” There are many that we will pursue throughout our lives. Some are small, and some are larger. Regardless, if you, the reader, believes that any of these purposes mean anything objectively or not, you must admit that one will pursue a lot of purposes over the course of your life. And frankly, that is one of the reasons that life is so interesting.

And lastly, anyone could be right, and anyone could be wrong. I am no exception. I think I am right, but that is because I am me. I could just as easily be wrong about anything. So, in the grand scheme of things, I would just like to say that, no matter what my purpose really is, I am glad to be alive right now. I am glad to have all of you to accompany me on my journey through life. And, as always, may the eyes of fortune forever gaze in your direction. Fare ye well, and cheerio!

#opinion

#philosophy

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ValiantRaptor47

19 reads

Sending Civilians to Death

The captain sat in the corner playing chess with one of the lieutenants. He had been promoted only two weeks ago, and the company was to advance the next day, return to the front lines for something big. No one was sure what, but it was probably just another offensive. The captain knew what was in for him, as the junior officers always led the charges, so he just kept playing his chess game, sending little soldiers into war, by himself. The men called it “captain’s syndrome,” and one of the symptoms of it was a bullet through the head within the third or fourth week.

The company grenadier leaned against the tavern wall, next to the door, writing in a little pocked journal he had. It was curious: for a man so keen to throw explosives an other humans, he was really just a quiet individual. He liked to stroll through gardens and forests, not launch explosive projectiles. The other lieutenant sat in a chair against the wall a few feet away from him, just sitting there with his eyes closed, resting while he still could.

The company machine gunners, of which there were three, all sat at the same table, laughing and tossing jokes as they drank their poorly-brewed beers. The company’s best sniper sat at a different table, reading a leather-bound book. He was capable of hitting a Frenchman from four hundred meters, probably. That was the thing about the snipers - they had it easy, because they never saw a person’s face before they killed them. The other infantrymen, on the other hand, now they had to watch the light leave a foe’s face as they lay dying under their bayonet. Anyway, the sniper sat quietly reading his book. He was never really anything but a poet. He had written a few short excerpts of poetry for his town paper back home.

Most of the company were not ordering much food or drink, but nevertheless, the French women who ran the tavern were running around as if it were a busy day, asking the soldiers if the wanted their plates cleared, or if they wanted something else to drink.

“Plus de Biere?” “Plus de biere?” “Quel bordel!” Muller only leaned against a wall in the corner, watching all of the scene unfold. There was little French child running around the room, happy to be with the soldiers, even though they were Germans. He was playing with a little wooden stick, using it as a toy gun. Some of the soldiers smiled at him before he pointed it toward the empty doorway and charged out of the tavern. “That’ll give us Germans a scare,” Muller thought. “His feet are backwards.”

Muller had been in the company since 1914, and had somehow not been killed yet. He knew how the attacks worked, as they rotated new men into the company to replace the dead ones. Come tomorrow, at least half the people in this tavern would be dead. He wondered who it would be. The captain? One or both of the lieutenants? The sniper? The grenadier? The machine gunners? Come dawn in two days, at least one of those specific people would be dying in the mud, blood streaming over innocent lips. But that was the thing, really, they were not soldiers, none of them. They were civilians in soldiers’ uniforms.

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Challenge

Magic

You were born with magical powers. You managed to hide this from everyone, until one day, you had to use your abilities to save a child. Now, the whole world knows about you. The military tries to use you. But, you refuse. Now they start blackmailing you. Your parents ask you to run away. You do so, but they are still in close pursuit. Through your journey, you meet a lot of people, you know more about your powers and even use it sometimes. But, something dangerous than the army start following you. Another group of people with magical abilities, who were hiding from the world. What do you do? You can run the story in any century you feel so. Maybe win with the help of ordinary humans or other enhanced individuals, or even lose in the end. I leave it all up to you. This is my first challenge in Prose. I am excited.

ValiantRaptor47

69 reads

Weapons of Self

James walked out of the library, whistling casually to himself. The streets of Mumbai were well crowded today, and it was not until a few moments later that he noticed people staring at him. They were not Indians, no, but Englishmen. That much could be discerned from their clothing alone. James glanced sideways at a man walking down the side of the street across from him, at the same pace, staring at him.

Another man at the end of the corner of that street was staring at him over a newspaper…An English newspaper that was not printed in Mumbai. “These people clearly cannot do this well,” James thought. He looked into the glass window of a shoppe as he passed by, and behind him, about ten or twenty meters away, was another man. All of them were well-dressed, and there were probably more of them, as the streets were quite crowded. James began to feel tense.

“You are James Peterson,” a woman asked as she walked next to him. James hadn’t even seen her approach. She was not wearing a dress, but brown dress pants and a brown coat. She was trying to make it look as if she were not talking to him, as she was looking down into open book as if she were reading it. James did not answer her. “This is the part where you say, ‘that depends,’” the woman stated.

“That would give it away,” James replied without looking at her.

“You just gave it away,” the woman replied. “Look at the book.” James glanced down at the book. It read: “act calm.” James felt as if his collar were choking him. “Curious that the treasurer of England should suddenly disappear, and then be seen in India. Especially the case when he had witnessed a child nearly hit by an automobile, an automobile that disobeyed the laws of physics by turning sharply away with no driver.”

“How do I know that I can trust you?”

“In here,” the woman stated, and and walked into a shoppe. There were many shelves of everything from clothing to kitchen supplies and so forth. They walked into a corner of the room, and James watched as the men following them stood casually outside the store, waiting for them to come out. “Listen to me,” the woman began sternly. “My name is Mary Chillingsworth, and there is nothing I can tell you that will make you trust me, you will just have to make up your mind: who do you trust, me, or the gentlemen outside who are following you?”

“All right, I assume they are after me because of my abilities?” James clarified.

“Yes,” Mary replied. James could see now that she was a young woman with long brown hair and grey eyes. “The gentlemen chasing you are members of the British government, they want to recruit you for service. I try to save people like you before those men can reach you.”

“You assume I don’t want to join them?”

“If you did, then why did you leave Britain,” Mary inquired rhetorically. “Also, the men outside don’t take no for an answer, so we need to make our escape. There is a ship waiting in the nearest harbor, leaving for Taiwan in fifteen minutes or less. There’s a safe house there, but we need to get on that ship before it leaves. What are your powers?”

“I can manipulate mechanical objects telepathically. You?”

“I can do two things,” Mary began. “I can make people more or less susceptable to sound for a short time, and I can live for hundreds of years, at least. Now follow me.” She ran upstairs before James could ask anything further.

“When were you born?” He shot after her up the stairs.

“1351, England,” she replied. James grunted in acknowledgement. She looked young enough to be in her twenties or thirties. They made it to the top floor of the building, where Mary had stopped.

“Take off your hat,” she demanded.

“Why?”

“It says: ‘I’m English,’” she replied. “Take it off, any chance that they will not see us is one worth taking.” James took off his black top hat and set it on the ground. “Come on.” They crawled through a hatch in the ceiling and climbed onto the roof. By the time James had made the ascent, Mary had already jumped to the roof of the building across from them.

“Oh, bloody-“ James followed her, heaving as he jumped over the alleyway. They jumped to one more rooftop before there was no other place to go. James looked behind him, and two men - one with black hair in a brown suit and one with blonde hair in a grey suit - were jumping across as well.

“Jump,” he shouted to Mary.

“What?”

“Trust me!” She jumped, and James concentrated and watched as the automobile he had summoned drove down the street just as she landed atop it. He jumped onto the roof as well, and he made it move forward. They raced down the streets, civilians jumping out of the way in order to avoid being hit with the shiny black automobile.

“Oh, great,” Mary moaned as she looked into the sky. The man in the brown suit was jumping from building to building beside them, in bounds that did not seem humanly possible. Mary took a pistol from her coat and fired a few shots at the man, not hitting him, but she sure scared some civilians.

“There,” James pointed as they raced down a hill. “The harbor!”

“Lookout,” Mary shouted, and pointed to a man, an Englishman, in a black suit who stood in the middle of the road. They frantically tried to wave him out of the way, but he just stood there, expressionless. There was no way to swerve around him, and the little car crashed into him, but it did not run him over, it stopped. The man was somehow strong or heavy enough to stop the car. They flew off the roof of the thing and onto the street.

James and Mary shot to their feet, and Mary pointed her pistol at the imposing gentlemen who were now cornering them as the civilians fled the marketplace.

“We don’t want to hurt you,” the man who had stopped the automobile said calmly and even with a smile as he walked slowly toward them. He had brown hair and a moustache, and was evidently the one in charge of the group.

“I know,” James stated. “You want to recruit me to fight for the British Empire, again, and I don’t accept.” He turned to punch the man next to him, who also wore a black suit, but that man held out his hand and James flew through the glass window of the building behind him. He could hear Mary fighting with some of the other people.

James shot back to his feet, and he raised his fists as he confronted the blond-haired man in the grey suit. The man, rather than fighting, just stood there, and then his body began change shape, and he shrank, and it was really quite disgusting. James watched as his clothes fell to the ground, and a large grey wolf emerged from them. It snared its teeth and then lunged at James, knocking him to the ground. It was all he could to to keep the wolf off of his throat. A wooden beam came out of nowhere and slammed the wolf in the side of the head, rendering it unconscious. James looked up to see Marry holding it.

“Fancy to wrestle later?” She said as she tossed the beam aside. It was then that James saw the man in the brown suit charging them, so he grabbed Mary’s gun from the ground and pointed it at the man, but Mary pushed his arm up just as it discharged, and then she punched the man as he ran up with incredible force.

“Whose side are you on, I was going to kill him?” James exclaimed.

“We’re not killing anybody,” Mary protested. “They may not be the good guys, but they’re not the bad guys either.”

“Sorry,” James replied as they ran off. “I fought in the Second Afghan War, ok? That was 1879. I’ve seen my fare share of death.” They ran down the streets, and the finally made it to the pier, but three of the men had somehow gotten there already. These were the man with the black suit and the moustache, the man with the blonde hair (who was only dressed in his grey pants and a partly-buttoned shirt. Evidently, to get completely dressed would have taken too long), and the fast man in the brown suit. They were all unarmed, but it took an observant one to know that they did not necessarily require weapons to kill.

“Yes, I know,” the man in the black suit smiled. “‘How did we get here so fast?’ Well, teleportation comes in handy.”

“Where are the others,” Mary asked.

“Still unconscious,” he replied. “Listen, both of you. We want to recruit you for field intelligence, not the military,” the man smiled. “We are on the same side, Peterson. We only want to protect king and country.”

“Really?” James scoffed. “Because last I checked, I’m not the treasurer anymore.”

“There’s no getting out of this, James,” the man stated as he raised his fists. The man in the brown suit positioned his legs as if he were going to charge them, and the man in the grey suit transformed into a large, green python or anaconda or something, reared and ready to strike. James just stood there, staring at the refinery next to them, staring at the smokestacks, concentrating. By the time the others realized what he was doing, it was too late, as the smokestacks billowed large plumes of jet-black ash, rendering visibility poor. By some miracle, James and Mary made it onto the ship, just as the ash cleared.

The other men were still on the pier, and as the ship left the docks, Mary seemed to concentrate. As the ship’s horn sounded, signaling departure, the men on the pier covered their ears and fell to their knees, trying to block out the noise that Mary had somehow amplified.

“Right then,” Mary looked at him as she clasped her hands together. “So, Taiwan?”

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ValiantRaptor47

54 reads

The Age of Vikings

So, this post somewhat follows my statement that I would take a break from posts about wars of the past. In its essence, the Viking raids were not so much of an official war as they were a series of invasions of England and other territories.

First, some contextualization. The wars and conflict brought about by the Vikings lasted roughly from the 800s to the 1000s C.E. Contrary to popular belief, the Vikings were not a ragtag group of disorganized barbarians that wandered across Northern seas; rather, they rather a well-organized and disciplined fighting force. While it is true that there were numerous Viking clans at any given time, they were well regulated by their own leadership and occasionally would work together. Though the Vikings would conquer as far as Northern North America (and be absolutely crushed by the Native Americans), this post will center around the Viking invasions of England.

The first recorded instance of conflict resulting from Viking invasions was in 793 C.E., when a monastery (a type of community of Christian monks) was raided. In fact, Vikings would often target monasteries more than any other objective for raids, as these communities were usually poorly defended and held many valuable objects. Essentially, the Age of Vikings began as a series of numerous and somewhat random acts of pillaging the English coastline.

However, by the late 800s, the Viking armies had become quite organized. Just before the year 850, Wessex was victim to a naval invasion of Vikings and nearly fell. The clans of England (England was not so much of a unified nation at this point as it was a collection of smaller kingdoms), at this point, began to rally in response to the Viking invaders. York became a heavy area of conflict during the first few centuries of this age, with forces from both sides more or less repeating the same battles over and over.

The Vikings were also very good at picking and choosing their battles. They would often infiltrate fortresses, posing as civilians or monks, and spy on them to determine the defenses of targets. They would also target civilizations and communities that were perhaps lowly populated, or ones with people who did not get along well or where disputes already existed that would hinder the ability of a local populace to come together in defense of their land.

The Vikings fought quite valiantly, and this was largely because they would earn honor if they fought well in battle, and, if they died in battle, as long as they died an honorable death, they would earn a high place in the afterlife. With these beliefs, the Vikings pretty much fought as if nothing mattered, making them deadly combatants and enemies on the battlefield. As I’m sure you have already guessed, Vikings were not too keen on treating conquered peoples well. Their interests were in looting and pillaging, and as to the civilian populations of taken lands, they would most likely face slavery (called “thralls” in Old Norse), torture, or execution.

Finally, Alfred the Great of Wessex managed to take back much of England from the Vikings in the late 800s. After the 1000s, the Viking raids would gradually become more and more infrequent and on far less of a scale than they had been in the past. But who technically won in the Viking Age? While the Vikings ultimately declined in number and then vanished as a people by the 1000s, all empires and nations will at some point fall, so it is important to look at this matter relative to their time.

The Vikings, in this essence, easily had the English peoples outdone. They were more organized, more ruthless, and overall won more skirmishes than their English counterparts. Even as the Vikings attempted and failed to take Sussex in the late years of their age (thanks to William the Bastard), the era forged and defined by the Vikings was nearly over.

I would not, in any instance, want to have lived in England during any time before 1600. Not even four hundred years before the Vikings arrived, the Romans had just left Britannia. This post more or less shows how simply miserable the Middle Ages were for those living in that era of history. Yet, it also shows how fun it is for us historians today to study! So, at least there’s that benefit.

#nonfiction

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ValiantRaptor47

12 reads