Gunnar Wolf

Umh, is today the quote your neighbour day? No? Thought so... Still, for the second time in a couple of minutes, I'm quoting/translating here. This time, I'm quoting a short text posted by fellow Mexican Debian guy Rodrigo Gallardo: Deceptions (hmm... Not in the let you down sense, but in the deceiving sense. Sometimes it is hard to translate a single word without twisting it around). My translation is far from perfect - Read it in Spanish, you will enjoy it more.

Rodrigo says:

Things and actions are what they are, and the consequences of them will be what they will be; why then should we desire to be deceived?

—Joseph Butler

I was in Colima, sitting on a slide in a city park, that day I understood why somebody might want to be drunk. Several years later, this time in Tlalpan, I understood why somebody would want to believe in a god. And sometimes I am truly sorry not to be able to embrace neither of both longings. The idea of letting go the facts, to believe they have an inner order, although covered in mistery, or they are just far away, blurry.

But where others see destiny, I see things falling naturally in their place. Where others see beauty in the mistery, I see a challenge. And even more beauty in an elegant explanation, in understanding. Motivation, not in the promise of future welfare but in the certainty of this limited but tangible present welfare. Freedom in the absence of a purpose, and inmortality in the little pebble I am in the great human building.

I suppose that if Revernd Butler knew his phrase inspired this divagation, it would not make him precisely happy. But, things are what they are, and his argument says what it says.