Pascal My Pal

You probably know about Pascal's Wager. If you don't, here it is in a shell of nut:

If you believe in god and turn out to be wrong - no harm no foul.
BUT, if you don't believe in god and turn out to be wrong, well then say hello to eternal damnation.

So, the safe wager, is to bet on believing in god, and that the Browns will lose.

Until now, I did not know that Pascal had any ties to existentialism.

Low and behold, thanks to William Barrett's Irrational Man, I have been corrected.

It turns out that Pascal's view of human existence and nothingness laid some major groundwork for the philosophy.

Try this on for size from Blaise:

"When I consider the short duration of my life, swallowed up in the eternity before and after, the little space which I fill, and even can see, engulfed in the infinite immensity of space of which I am ignorant, and which knows me not, I am frightened, and am astonished being here rather than there, why now rather than then."

Holy shit! How's that for  fragile and contingent? Sheesh, I thought Mondays were bad. Might need a cocktail tonight.

But seriously, I entitled the post Pascal My Pal because I appreciate the honesty, the brute, "it sucks but it's true so I have to say it," honesty. Honesty, when it makes you uncomfortable, when it frightens you, deep down when it's dark and you aren't tethered, trying to find not your home but a home...this is the honesty above.

Can you handle it?