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Why hello there, insomnia.
Sep. 3rd, 2011 02:36 amI was tired, and tried to go to bed, but sleep wasn't happening. This always seems to happen on Friday nights, when I need to be out the door at 8am the following morning. :P I have a strange life, I can sleep in as late as I like on weekdays, but on weekends I must get up in the morning. On Saturday it's the Market, on Sunday it's church.
Which leads me to think about something that happened last week, that has to do with insomnia and the Market and church too. Since I have nothing better to do right now, I'll write about it. Skip if you don't want philosophy and religion in your day. :)
Last week I had it pretty bad. I didn't get to bed until nearly 6am, and with the alarm going off at 7:30 it goes without saying that I didn't get much sleep. JJ hadn't gotten to bed much earlier, and while I don't mind depriving myself of sleep for my work, doing it to him on his weekend is a bit too cruel, so I went and drove myself, set up my stuff alone, and generally managed. Which I don't mind at all! But last week I had a problem. I'm usually pretty good at staying awake, lots of college all-nighters under my belt, and I've always done it without stimulants, since they're against my religion. But even I have limits, at by about four in the afternoon I had nodded off at my table half a dozen times, and I was starting to worry. Because JJ couldn't come get me, I had the car with me. I would have to drive. Other alternatives (sleeping in a down town parking garage) didn't seem like a great idea (I mean this is Eugene, I'd probably be fine, but I'm not sure I could get any good sleep in such a situation anyhow) so I was left with pretty much two options. Option one, just drive home anyhow. Odds are that nothing would happen, even though being that tired is just as bad as being drunk. But it's not a great option. Option two, have some caffeine.
A lot of devout people would go with option one. I mean, "driving while tired" isn't against anybody's religion, right? It's not sin, like a cup of coffee is, so it's the better thing to do, right? Surely doing something really stupid but not sinful is better than doing something you're specifically forbidden to do! And that right there is the problem with a pre-packaged moral system. When all you have are a list of "do this" and "don't do that" and your moral choices involve nothing more than checking if it's on the "don't do that" list, you get your priorities out of order. And you do the "right" thing that in this case could get you or some innocent person who gets in your way when you fall asleep at the wheel, killed.
I went and found the nearest source of caffeine, drank a mocha (which was the least vile-tasting option available) and was awake enough to drive home safely.
I'm sure the very idea would horrify a lot of people at my church. I broke a rule. I did a "thou shalt not." I did something wrong. But I happen to think I did something right. And I did what I did because I unwrapped my pre-packaged moral system and had a look at it, and thought about it, and considered the reasons behind it. The scriptural bit that forbids coffee, for example, is presented with a promise. Follow these dietary rules and you will be healthy and strong and wise, it says. So there is my reason. I promised God I'd eat and drink a certain way, and He promised me He'd help me be healthy and wise. Now I have something to weigh against the other half of my equation. I weigh "healthy and wise" against "maybe kill somebody" and I find that I'd rather pass on healthy and wise for a while, to avoid the whole death and maiming thing. :) But somebody who's never taken their religious commandments out of the box and had a look at them may well have chosen the other way. And they probably would have been just fine, truth be told. But maybe they wouldn't have been.
I've read a number of studies that say that atheists have more highly developed moral codes than theists. I suspect that's why. Nobody has handed them a tidy box of do-and-don't. They've had to build their own. When you need to stop to weigh every decision on its own merits, rather than just checking it against a list, you end up putting a lot more thought into even the smallest of choices.
Of course plenty of theists have great moral systems. The commandments of a religion make a really good starting point, in my opinion. But it's only a starting point. If you stop there, you're crippling your morality, and in the end you may well end up making a lot of knee-jerk stupid decisions. Maybe even ones that get somebody killed.
Which leads me to think about something that happened last week, that has to do with insomnia and the Market and church too. Since I have nothing better to do right now, I'll write about it. Skip if you don't want philosophy and religion in your day. :)
Last week I had it pretty bad. I didn't get to bed until nearly 6am, and with the alarm going off at 7:30 it goes without saying that I didn't get much sleep. JJ hadn't gotten to bed much earlier, and while I don't mind depriving myself of sleep for my work, doing it to him on his weekend is a bit too cruel, so I went and drove myself, set up my stuff alone, and generally managed. Which I don't mind at all! But last week I had a problem. I'm usually pretty good at staying awake, lots of college all-nighters under my belt, and I've always done it without stimulants, since they're against my religion. But even I have limits, at by about four in the afternoon I had nodded off at my table half a dozen times, and I was starting to worry. Because JJ couldn't come get me, I had the car with me. I would have to drive. Other alternatives (sleeping in a down town parking garage) didn't seem like a great idea (I mean this is Eugene, I'd probably be fine, but I'm not sure I could get any good sleep in such a situation anyhow) so I was left with pretty much two options. Option one, just drive home anyhow. Odds are that nothing would happen, even though being that tired is just as bad as being drunk. But it's not a great option. Option two, have some caffeine.
A lot of devout people would go with option one. I mean, "driving while tired" isn't against anybody's religion, right? It's not sin, like a cup of coffee is, so it's the better thing to do, right? Surely doing something really stupid but not sinful is better than doing something you're specifically forbidden to do! And that right there is the problem with a pre-packaged moral system. When all you have are a list of "do this" and "don't do that" and your moral choices involve nothing more than checking if it's on the "don't do that" list, you get your priorities out of order. And you do the "right" thing that in this case could get you or some innocent person who gets in your way when you fall asleep at the wheel, killed.
I went and found the nearest source of caffeine, drank a mocha (which was the least vile-tasting option available) and was awake enough to drive home safely.
I'm sure the very idea would horrify a lot of people at my church. I broke a rule. I did a "thou shalt not." I did something wrong. But I happen to think I did something right. And I did what I did because I unwrapped my pre-packaged moral system and had a look at it, and thought about it, and considered the reasons behind it. The scriptural bit that forbids coffee, for example, is presented with a promise. Follow these dietary rules and you will be healthy and strong and wise, it says. So there is my reason. I promised God I'd eat and drink a certain way, and He promised me He'd help me be healthy and wise. Now I have something to weigh against the other half of my equation. I weigh "healthy and wise" against "maybe kill somebody" and I find that I'd rather pass on healthy and wise for a while, to avoid the whole death and maiming thing. :) But somebody who's never taken their religious commandments out of the box and had a look at them may well have chosen the other way. And they probably would have been just fine, truth be told. But maybe they wouldn't have been.
I've read a number of studies that say that atheists have more highly developed moral codes than theists. I suspect that's why. Nobody has handed them a tidy box of do-and-don't. They've had to build their own. When you need to stop to weigh every decision on its own merits, rather than just checking it against a list, you end up putting a lot more thought into even the smallest of choices.
Of course plenty of theists have great moral systems. The commandments of a religion make a really good starting point, in my opinion. But it's only a starting point. If you stop there, you're crippling your morality, and in the end you may well end up making a lot of knee-jerk stupid decisions. Maybe even ones that get somebody killed.