Oliver-Martin Rapsch

Like every thinking person I wonder what makes me tick: Who am I? Am I even? Is there a purpose in life beyond what we give it? Decades ago I decided to follow reason: I had seen what religion and esotericism can do to people: On the receiving end are usually not the followers of those worldviews, but invariably those who chose to think independently and who do not want to be forced to agree to an opinion – or those who are simply unlucky enough to be born with a colour, a gender, a sexuality or a lineage that make them unsuitable for a society or even for life in the eyes of other people.

I have been influenced among others by Desiderius Erasmus, Albert Camus, Voltaire, John Stuart Mill and recently Michael Schmidt-Salomon. The meaning I have chosen to give my life is to campaign for tolerance, to confront intolerance wherever I see it (thus not tolerating the intolerant), to gather knowledge whenever and wherever I can get it in order to understand where I come from and where my place in this universe is if that is even possible. We are the top of a growing pyramid: influenced by people, ideas and events before us, and the better we understand what supports us, the easier are we able to give our life a meaning, and the easier it is for us to find satisfaction in what we are doing.

Let me quote Richard Feynman from “The Pleasure of Finding Things Out”:
I can live with doubt, and uncertainty, and not knowing. I think it's much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong. I have approximate answers, and possible beliefs, and different degrees of certainty about different things, but I’m not absolutely sure of anything, and in many things I don’t know anything about, such as whether it means anything to ask why we’re here, and what the question might mean. I might think about a little, but if I can’t figure it out, then I go to something else. But I don’t have to know an answer. I don’t feel frightened by not knowing things, by being lost in a mysterious universe without having any purpose, which is the way it really is, as far as I can tell, possibly. It doesn’t frighten me.

I wholeheartedly agree...

This website is solely run on a private, non-profit basis and has no commercial purposes at all

Oliver-Martin Rapsch

E-Mail: administrator@rapsch.co.uk