Ladies and Gentlemen… Boys and Girls…

I have finally found a religion that I can get behind, at least enough to get ordained on the internet. 🙂

Dudeism.

Hey, man, don’t give me that look.

Yes, the movement has a fuckin’ hellacious name, but the contents of this philosophic mamajama are nothing to be scoffed at. Sure, Dudeism is a religion deeply inspired by The Big Lebowski, but a second glance will show that it cherry picks from Taoism, Zen Buddhism, American Transcendentalism and humanism. However, it is not affiliated with the film in any way, and if I had to guess, since it does pull from American Transcendentalism, other films (like Kung Fu Panda and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off) will probably end up in it holy works eventually. They will at least end up in my list of works that bring the world towards a higher understanding of what it means to “just take it easy.”

Dudeism’s Ethos

From what is Dudeism trying to liberate us? Thinking that’s too uptight.
To what state of being is Dudeism trying to bring us: Just taking it easy, man.
By what means does Dudeism attempt do this? Abiding.

A Message From The Dudely Lama

“Life is short and complicated and nobody knows what to do about it. So don’t do anything about it. Just take it easy, man. Stop worrying so much whether you’ll make it into the finals. Kick back with some friends and some oat soda and whether you roll strikes or gutters, do your best to be true to yourself and others – that is to say, abide.

All joking aside, this comes so extraordinarily very close to my actual philosophical belief system that if you rolled up some Jewish morality in there, you’d have my total belief system. And to be fair, Reform Jewish morality is extremely close to that of humanism. There’s just always the question of “Is there or isn’t there a supreme being?” And I’m on Team G.O.D. I believe there is a God. I don’t care what you call Him/Her/It. I believe it exists outside the realm of our perception, and I believe it will continue to exist whether or not we worship it or recognize its existence.

In fact, I believe that God is possibly the most Dudelike of all in His abiding of us all. I believe we have a spark of whatever God stuff there is that makes stuff happen, and that someday scientists might have a name for it that will make my writings sound like prophecy.

Because Science is Magic like that, and I believe God speaks through us all.

And there is so much in this world that each of us cannot possibly know. There are 5 billion plus human beings living on this planet. Each one with their own eyes, their own ears, their own perspective, their own experience, their own plans, their own pain… and that’s just right now.

You look at this world, this amazing planet earth, and I wonder if it had a sign like McDonalds what it would read like. 60 Trillion lives served?

I’ve said, “It’s their world, we’re just living in it.” when on the road before, so many times not thinking about it.” but really, if you think about it, each of us lives in our own consciousness. Imagine a metaconsciousness that somehow is supposed to know 5 billion unique experiences at every moment of every day and somehow also control the environment around them. That’s what we’ve been told God is. Can you imagine having access to the 5 billion worlds that exist on this one planet at any given moment on any day? It makes me kinda giggle to think about it. Some folks on Quora were discussing whether or not this world and life were a simulation… if so, we’d be God’s video game!

My response to them was, “Why does it matter?”

Opiate of the masses or not, I believe religion has its place in the world and so does philosophy.

We need to ask ourselves the important questions. We need to find out the answer to the question that toddlers ask incessantly. “Why?”

Dudeism answers that question in a way that I like better than any other. It says, “Sit back, relax – the world will show you.”