1/ Here's another thing to consider:

Materialism is the attempt to achieve non-suffering by diverting nature's naive course, e.g.

- Lying to loved ones
- Sexual gratification without love
- Getting high on drugs

All of this is "lying" to nature, so to speak. Pre-empting her. https://twitter.com/tom_username_/status/1244025411975229441

2/ The ultimate version of this is life itself.

Fleshly existence is in defiance of default existence (i.e. indifferent ideational bliss). Trying to keep your material existence intact is diverting nature's natural course in order to achieve short-term non-suffering.

3/ Materialism is a kind of impatience: "No, I want pleasure in *this* time-frame. I don't want to wait until marriage."

The denial of God and the afterlife is this exact same phenomenon, but to the utmost extent.

It's the firm conviction that *now!* is what matters.

4/ Existence has two sides:

- Original spirit/consciousness/perception

vs.

- Desire/will/cause-effect entropy/route of least burden/decay

Or as Schopenhauer puts it: Representation vs. Will

Original spirit is extracting yourself from route of least burden/will/decay.

E.g.

5/ With raw perception (what we tend to call these days "meditation"), you rise above the mechanistic decay of physics.

i.e. You become meta-physical and identify as consciousness itself.

Without perception, you degenerate into materialistic confusion. https://twitter.com/tom_username_/status/1233056095247138816

6/ So to relate this the first part of this thread:

By surrendering your perception to an external mechanistic worldview, you no longer have to perceive the world as it really is. You did this because it promised non-suffering in a quicker time-frame

This is why you're atheist.