There is no anything

Yes, yes, it's been too long since I've blogged. I'll get to the necessary stuff later this week, but it's time for an impromptu post. All I have is one quick line of thought, and that's that. (I hesitate to use "argument" because this is more a series of leading questions, a la Socrates, instead of an argument.)

So. Think about your [______]. I intentionally leave this blank to demonstrate the generality of this, but when I first began constructing this point (important word choice foreshadowing), I had religion in mind. Use gender, use morality, use whatever you want, as long as it has its own naming system. I started with religion because it has the most recognizable terms - Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Islam, etc. Now. Finish this sentence: "I am (a) [______]." I am Catholic, I am a Mormon, I am Hindu, I am atheist, whatever it is, you can fill it in. Think of someone else who is the same as you in this regard. If you're Catholic, think of another Catholic. Do you both share exactly the same set of [whatever you think comprises religion]? Do you both have the exact same religious beliefs about every single thing there is to have a religious belief about? My guess is not. There's nothing wrong with that; this is in fact my point, that no two religions are alike. By religions, I mean my religion and your religion, not Christianity and Buddhism. So then what does it mean for you to be [______]? For someone else? Probably different things. There are a large enough number of variables that "religion" differs from person to person. So much so that given one other variable, people, that "religion" doesn't even really exist as such. You can have beliefs about religion, you can practice religion, but you call yourself a [______] only because that's what everyone else would call it. By deconstructing (see: previous parenthetical foreshadowing) religion based on language, we can effectively erase it as such. Now, the sentence becomes "My religion is my religion." It's not called the same as anyone else's because it's not the same as anyone else's.

So, back to my general claim. We can deconstruct anything in this way. My gender, however masculine/feminine you want to claim it is, is different from yours. Different from my friends, from my parents, from my sister, and different from anyone else. Because we can construct an infinite amount of genders, we can essentially remove gender. Because we can construct an infinite amount of religions, we can essentially remove religion. (And now, for the real mind-blowing part.) Because we can construct an infinite amount of deconstruction, there is no deconstruction. BOOM!

If you have any thoughts about this, please leave comments below! It's not often I ask for comments, but this is a really fascinating line of thought to me, and I want to see what you all think. Thanks for reading!